


To Conjure a Man

by oneinspats



Series: coveting desperate things [4]
Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Don't copy to another site, M/M, Mentions of Past Assault, Murder, Mystery, in reference to the tactics of this one serial killer, so much murder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-09
Updated: 2019-06-07
Packaged: 2020-01-07 10:42:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 44,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18409004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oneinspats/pseuds/oneinspats
Summary: Follow up to Mask of the Ordinary.Six months have passed with little movement since the discovery of thirty-year old bodies. Downey is his disastrously curious self (and feeling terribly vindicated). Vetinari just wants things to be Sorted (sooner rather than later). Angua dreams of the day when she will be left alone. And Vimes desires to remind everyone whose bleeding jurisdiction this all falls under.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> “The victims recede from view. Their rhythm is off, their confidence drained. They’re laden with phobias and made tentative by memory. Divorce and drugs beset them. Statutes of limitations expire. Evidence kits are tossed for lack of room. What happened to them is buried, bright and unmoving, a coin at the bottom of a pool. They do their best to carry on.”  
> ― Michelle McNamara, I'll Be Gone in the Dark

They were loved. This is clear in many burial sites exhumed by archeologists and, occasionally, farmers, carpenters, the Watch. There will be signs that the dead were tended to, cared for, and left with different objects they were understood to need in the afterlife.

This is how the bodies look to Angua as she stands with Cheery over the new group found beneath boards of the second floor. They are skeletal, but each is tenderly wrapped in a yellow shawl or dress. Cheery says that is almost looks like a burial rite. The shroud, the way their arms are positioned across their chests, each one’s head turned to the left. There was thought and care that went into it.

On an island off the coast of the counterweight continent the residents bury their dead beneath their houses so to be close to kith and kin. When dry seasons strike and the chestnuts, olives, myrtle, maquis begin to die off one will dig up their dead and take the skull to place in a riverbed which will call down the rains.

What did this killer hope to call down? Did he think he was honouring the dead? Did he think he was loving them in their burial?

Angua goes down to the front landing, the house is half torn down, although much of the work remains stalled due to the continuing investigation. Vimes is talking to the workman who found the bodies. A visibly shaken young man of no more than twenty he looks relieved when Angua comes up to the commander for a word.

‘Pictures have been taken, sir. Can we move the bodies?’

They can and so begins the careful, solemn work of transfering the dead from internment in the bones of a house to internment in Watch evidence rooms.

  
  


///

  
  


Autumn morning brings a silky humidity to the city and so the Times ink has not dried sufficiently, even with the staff ironing it before it goes to his lordship. Therefore, Vetinari’s fingers are smudged black, the side of his right hand from rest against open paper as he picks through the morning crossword.

The table is set thusly: a single pot of tea, a single cup, a single soft-boiled egg, a single piece of toast with only a little butter. In a gesture to normalcy the staff always include salt and pepper in case the patrician feels the need to add condiments to his morning victuals. Thus far, the patrician has never felt the need to add condiments to his victuals.

The crossword this morning is particularly cryptic which excites him. He tucks in with great enthusiasm. Once half the puzzle is complete Vetinari decides to save the other half for his lunch and so readjusts the paper to the beginning and is greeted with front page headlines touting concern about the changing grain price in large capital letters with bold print beneath: GRAIN CRISES?

Vetinari skims the article then moves on. Other news includes, TRAIN PRICES TO INCREASE; UNSEEN UNIVERSITY EXPLOSION EXPLAINED; NEW POSTMASTER GENERAL SELECTED, then goes down to the myriad and sundry local issues with each neighbourhood having something to spill across newsprint. A torrid affair here, a scandalous wedding there, something or other about someone saving a cat in a house fire. Much noise about the new city bylaws concerning street cleaning.

_Mr. Harcourt went and moved his dead horse onto me street front and I rightly moved it back then what did he do? Put it right back in front of me home again he did. Then I’m the one who got fined for not having cleared me street front? Isn’t fair, that. Stands to reason the city should do the clearing of the main streets. Not me._

It does stand to reason. But getting people to give up jurisdiction of the street to the city is a tooth-pulling exercise and so far an unsuccessful one. Vetinari had tried to explain, If you have jurisdiction of the street front outside your house you must keep it clear. If you grant it to the City, it will be cleared by municipal staff. With ownership comes responsibility.

It had not been a successful explanation.

The current city law states that if you own a home, or building, in the city you also owned the street, or laneway, in front of it up to the middle where it meets the portioned owned by the person opposite. In an ideal world, law abiding and civic-minded people would endeavour to keep their portions clear for the health and benefit of their fellow man. In reality, people never salt or clear snow in the winter and in summer they move the more vile refuse back and forth between each other’s sovereign lands rather than making the effort to get rid of it.  

To address this, a new bylaw was passed that meant offending homeowners who do not keep their portions clean can be fined. The patrician thought the approach fair but many opinion pieces in the Times have declared it an affront to the rights of Ankh-Morpork citizens. Vetinari disagrees.

Therefore, the battle for clean and clear Ankh-Morkpork streets continues ever on.

He turns the page. An update on the Grey Gardens: _Watch confirm more remains found in adjoining lot to Grey Gardens, the former boarding house currently under renovation_. The update brings the total number of bodies found up to seventeen from the original fourteen.

Drumknott knocks. Vetinari checks his watch, Downey is right on schedule.

‘A letter, your lordship.’

The Assassin Guild wax seal contrasts with the soft ivory of the paper. Vetinari breaks it open. It is short, as is Downey’s way, and merely says _Seventeen bodies. He was a surprisingly busy man. Not to mention discreet._ Vetinari taps the letter for a few seconds then rings for a cup of coffee to be brought up and, as it is early, perhaps some food. Despite their close acquaintance over the past year and a bit he remains uncertain as to when Downey breakfasts. It seems to be at an ever changing time.

Moving on from the Grey Gardens update Vetinari peruses the marriages, births and deaths page until a familiar presence announces itself from a back corner. It is a shift, a light breath of air, something about the weight of the room adjusts to acknowledge the company of another.

‘Your breakfasts depress me,’ Downey says by way of a good morning.

‘Terribly good thing they aren’t your breakfasts, then.’ Vetinari replies evenly. He shifts so he is in profile and can see the shadow within shadows that is Downey. The man materializes into early morning sunlight with a smile.

‘Ah is that coffee for me?’

‘Indeed.’

Downey, chuffed, seats himself.

‘Seventeen,’ Downey says. ‘That’s more than Raymond Foxe. Well, I’m fairly certain it’s more than Foxe.’

‘Didn’t he suggest we hadn’t found all the bodies?’

‘No, that was the other fellow. The Ripper one who went after seamstresses. Towards the end of his spree he wrote a letter to the city council saying something about how everyone thought it was nine girls but they hadn’t found them all.’ Downey pauses to sip the coffee. ‘Difficult in those days, since there wasn’t a fully functioning Watch.’

‘Whatever happened to him?’

‘The Ripper? Inhumed for a hefty two hundred dollars. Quite a bit of money back then.’

Vetinari hums. He mirrors Downey in coffee drinking but with tea. The sky is soft pinks and the city only just beginning to wake up. What noise is made comes from the docks and drifts lazily over rooftops and through chimneys, weather vanes, clothing lines strung up in alleyways.

Downey picks at the food provided. He says he thinks the number will be less than thirty. Less than twenty-five, even. Maybe twenty three? A sly expression, would the patrician be interested in having a bit of a flutter?

‘I’m not betting on how many people were murdered, Downey.’

‘Twenty,’ Downey says. ‘I think it’s going to be twenty.’

Vetinari purses his lips. Downey is waiting with great expectation. A rather endearing expression and one, if Vetinari were to be held at knife point and asked, of his favourites. Downey is an expressive man. Indeed, he has the occasional tendency towards the theatrical when it strikes. Only fitting, as an assassin. Half of being an assassin is performing being an assassin.

‘Nineteen,’ Vetinari says with some, small affection. ‘Shall we say ten dollars?’

‘Fifteen and bragging rights.’

Vetinari almost says, You’re such a teacher. Teachers love giving bragging rights out as rewards. He refrains. Instead, he accepts the proposition of fifteen dollars and bragging rights. Is there a timeline? Downey shrugs, is there ever a timeline for uncaught serial killers? Perhaps they’ll give it six months, a year.

Now that their regular update on the Grey Gardens has been satisfied, Vetinari turns to business.

‘I’ve heard that concerns are being raised about proposed changes to the Guild curriculum.’

Downey rolls his eyes. ‘Oh yes, the morality brigade.’

Vetinari raises an eyebrow and waits.

‘We’re making adjustments to the third and fourth year biology courses. I swear I’ve told you this already. Possibly fifth and sixth, too. That’s still under discussion. This has been under discussion for a year or so. I’ve definitely told you about it.’

Vetinari stands and motions for Downey to follow him into the Oblong Office. Downey’s annoyance is palpable. Once seated at his desk Vetinari shuffles a few papers around before pulling up a letter. He reads it over as Downey waits.

‘Well?’ Downey prompts.

Vetinari wordlessly hands it over. Downey gives it a read.

‘Ridiculous,’ he says. ‘I fail to understand how this is cause for outrage. Enabling licentious behaviour indeed. Parents are aware that their children will get up to all sorts whether they want them to or not, right? People don’t go and forget what they did as a teenager as soon as they produce offspring, correct?’

Vetinari folds his hands and listens.

‘Being educated on certain matters will only benefit them. Do you know, one student thought that pregnancy happens when you kiss someone? So everything else is game except kissing. Appalling.’

Vetinari continues his attentive listening.

‘This is long overdue, really. And as I said, we’ve been talking about it for a year now. I had hoped the concerned parents would have calmed down by this point. Especially considering we’re moving ahead regardless of their opinions.’ Downey adds for clarity, ‘We being the teaching staff.’

Downey continues down this line for a few minutes yet before trailing off in the face of Vetinari’s relentless listening.

‘I assume this has to do with the daughter of the Baron from the Ramtops getting pregnant?’ Vetinari asks once Downey is done.

‘Tangential to that, yes.’

‘Because she thought kissing was the only thing to watch out for?’

‘No, she didn’t really know how pregnancy worked at all.’

‘I see.’

‘It’s been a bit of a mess.’

‘Yes, I’m aware.’

‘Reinforces what I’ve been saying for years, though.’

‘Indeed.’

‘But everyone is too busy clutching pearls to listen to reason.’

‘Terrible.’

‘It is. Chapter fifteen of my memoir is going to be titled “All the Times I Was Right and No One Listened”. It’s going to be a very long chapter.’ Because Downey has a limited filter he adds, ‘I’m sure you’ll feature prominently in it but don’t worry, I like you--’

‘I should hope so.’

‘I’ll be discreet.’   

Vetinari ignores that, ‘I’ll send the concerned parents, whom you so charmingly call the “morality brigade” to you, shall I?’

Downey becomes morose. He states his dislike of most parents. Especially the ones that hover. Hovering annoys him. Vetinari says that he doesn’t care about Downey’s dislike of parents. They’re clogging up his schedule. And sending too many letters. They can write to Downey.

‘They tried,’ Downey says. ‘I ignored them.’

‘Well I’m passing these erstwhile citizens back to you.’

‘I see.’

‘I don’t want them in here again on this matter.’

‘Right.’

‘And you’re not allowed to inhume them, either.’

‘Personal disagreements settled in a permanent fashion aren’t under the control of the--’

‘No inhumation.’

Downey goes to object, apparently thinks better of it, and retreats from the conversation. He mutters that really, he only jests about it. He is very well aware of the source of the Guild’s prosperity comes from and he wouldn’t want to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.

A knock, Drumknott sticks his head in, ‘Lord Rust is here for his appointment, your lordship.’

‘Ah,’ Vetinari hands the letter of parental complaint to Downey. ‘I’ll see him now.’ To Downey, ‘I don’t want to hear about this issue in a professional context again. Don’t let me detain you.’

  
  


///

  
  


The morning, still early, is an empty, unblemished schedule for Downey. He decides to visit his mother seeing as there was an update to the Grey Gardens case and she will have read it as soon as the paper arrived.

He picks up another coffee on the way and stops at a pastry shop in the neighbourhood he grew up in. There are small, almond egg tarts called _queijinhos_ that are Annette’s preference on the few days she allows herself to be indulgent. She once told him that they remind her of her mother although Downey has no memory of his grandmother ever making or eating them.

Annette is frail. Always a small woman, she seems to have shrunk since her husband’s death a little over a year ago. Her hands are the cool, dry papery hands of the elderly. Downey helps her to her seat in the front room. On the table beside her is the morning paper, the finished crossword, her glasses, cold tea.

‘I’ll make you another cup,’ he says. She doesn’t let go of his hands. ‘Yours is cold.’

‘I’ll take care of it,’ she says. ‘Help me up.’

‘No, no I’ll do it. I’m capable of making tea, you know.’

She wants to object but he is through to the kitchen before she can. The fire needs stoking and once it’s up Downey puts the kettle on and rummages for tea. The kitchen is impeccable. He marvels that she still keeps everything so clean, even though there is no one left to clean for but herself. There’s no exacting standard of home-making she must meet.

The tea is in an old biscuit tin by the flour and salt.

Old habits, he muses, they do die hard. It’s only been a year. Hardly any time at all to unwind habits built up over fifty years of marriage. The water boils. He procures the tea pot, wrapped in a newly knitted cozy, and brings it out with two new cups.

‘Orange pekoe was all I could find,’ he says.

‘It’s my favourite but your father was never fond of it.’

‘I see.’ He pours them both a cup then settles down across from her. ‘How are you? Still going strong on the crossword front.’

‘I’m well, I’m well. I saw Laure the other day. She came by with some books. Here,’ she goes to stand but Downey is up before her and so she directs him to a collection of books by the front window. ‘I don’t know why she gave them to me. It seems a silly thing to give gifts to someone who could die any day.’

‘You’re not going to die any day, mom.’

‘Still,’ she sighs. ‘I’m in my twilight years. What use do I have for these things? Do you want any of them?’

He shifts through them as Annette begins to cover the neighbourhood gossip. There’s one book of interest, _Coloured Yellow: The Murder of Gene Lovery,_ he tucks under his arm. A few Abraham Richler novels but he’s read all the childhood required cultural reading of Richler and has little desire to revisit him. A slim book slips from hand and lands on the window-side table. _The Collected Autobiographies: Essays._ He takes it up and skims the inside leaf. He thinks he knows someone who would think it interesting. He tucks it under his arm with _Coloured Yellow_ then he untucks it and sets it back on the pile.

Perhaps he won’t find it interesting. Hard to say what will capture Vetinari’s attention in the world of books. Oh the man will read quite literally anything but why give something he’ll take minimal pleasure in? Downey hems and haws then picks it back up again and returns to his seat with both.

‘I found two of interest. The rest are Richler which, no offence, if I never read another of his books it will be too soon.’

Annette smiles, refilling her cup. The steam drifts up, lazy ghosts in the growing light from the window as morning turns into a more full fledged day.

‘So,’ she sits back, rests the cup on her lap. ‘Seventeen is it?’

‘Seventeen,’ Downey confirms.

‘Well, I suppose, as it was thirty years ago, we’ve nothing to worry about.’

‘No, we don’t,’ familiar territory. Downey has been reassuring her of this for months now. ‘Men who do things like that are generally active in their twenties and thirties then they stop. Maybe they get too old, maybe they die, maybe they get bored. Regardless, you have nothing to worry about.’

‘I heard there were signs that the bodies had been dismembered.’

Downey tilts his hand side to side. Only one or two. It wasn’t a ritual.

‘Gosh,’ she sighs. Shakes her head. ‘Those poor women. It’s always women, isn’t it? With Foxe then this man. They weren’t that far apart, Foxe and this Grey Gardens killer.’

‘No, they weren’t. But it’s not Foxe if that’s what you’re thinking. He was caught by then.’

‘Was he? How do we know they’re not his victims as well? The Watch isn’t that precise with the timeline.’

Downey repeats that he’s certain. He thinks to say he knows because he lived next door to the man for a year but doesn’t want to rake up the past. He knows how that conversation would go with his mother asking why and him saying it was after the disagreement with his father then they would become terribly awkward around each other and she would ask _how are you_ in a very meaningful way which he thinks is her attempt at asking if there’s anyone around she should know about and he would reply _I’m fine_ because she should absolutely _not_ know about the patrician.

And so on and so forth.

Instead, he steers the subject away from Grey Gardens to her quilting group. She becomes excited - oh, she has something for him. She’s just remembered. Setting aside her tea she reaches out for him to help her up. He does and finds her cane. She makes her way to the hall closet and once it’s open pulls out a quilt.

‘Magda and Laure’s children all have one. Everyone, really.’

‘Oh,’ he takes the quilt. ‘Thank you.’ It smells of mothballs and cedar.

‘I finished it maybe ten years ago and meant it for you but you know, things were…’ She trails off as she returns to her seat. ‘Well they were the way they were. But I held onto it, in case. I had thought that you might have had children, but that wasn’t in the cards.’

‘Technically, I have several hundred children and they’re rascals every one of them.’

She waves the jest away. Downey sits awkwardly with the quilt and his tea and his books. He feels not unlike a child again. His mother loading up his bags for school with socks, jumpers in case he got cold, food of all sorts (bread, little cookies with different fillings, jams, a bag of almonds and raisins and so on) - all of which he found eternally embarrassing. Every year she would stitch his initials into all his shirts and so he would spend the first night at the guild studiously unpicking black thread.

An hour later he takes his leave. The quilt is put at the foot of his bed and Alsace and Harold sniff it excitedly. He gives it a day before it’s covered in dog hair. He sets the books aside to think about after class.

‘Be good,’ he tells his dogs. They look at him with dumb affection. ‘Guard the fort.’ This means little to them although they do loose their energy when he takes up his bag and a stack of papers to return to his students. He promises to pay attention to them when he returns and leaves two depressed dogs behind as he heads into introductory algebra.

  
  


///


	2. Chapter 2

They’re conducting a  _ gedankenexperiment  _ because it’s midnight and Downey feels nostalgic. It came from visiting his mother, he explains. So, let us pick at that knot. 

He sets the question: What were you doing the moment it happened? It is important to be precise. Memory isn’t. Which is a fact that frustrates lawmen, lawyers, artists, writers, sleuths amateur and professional, juries, executioners. 

Memory leaves room for doubt:  _ what if what if.  _

What were you doing the moment it happened? The first time you truly thought that maybe there was something wrong? That maybe a murderer lived next door?

‘You were always going on about it,’ Vetinari says. ‘Though I can’t recall in exact detail when I started paying attention to your theories.’ 

‘We were arguing,’ Downey hums. ‘About that mustard yellow couch, or maybe who got which room.’ 

‘Had Ludo suggested the die-rolling solution?’ 

‘That was later.’ 

‘I could have sworn it was around then.’ 

They sit in silence. Downey smokes, his head resting on Vetinari’s stomach, every so often he ashes in a mug. Vetinari contemplates how best to move Downey along so he can return to work. Downey, half naked, languorous, is evidently lacking any inclination to leave. 

‘That’s when I thought something was wrong. We were arguing and we heard something on the other side of the wall.’ Downey nods to himself. ‘Did you know that each time you remember something you recreate that memory?’ 

Vetinari makes an interested noise. Encouraged, Downey explains. ‘Apparently when you remember something your brain is recreating that memory and in doing so writes over the old. There’s no original memory. What were you doing when you first heard they found bodies at Grey Gardens?’ 

‘Assessing the legal framework of the Ankh-Morpork toll roads.’ 

‘Gods of course you were. Go ahead then, recreate the scene.’ 

Vetinari thinks for a moment then says, ‘it was morning. No later than half-seven. I was in the Oblong Office. It was over cast. I remember Mr. Fusspot being cold as I had to fetch him a blanket. I had coffee brought in with the morning paper.’ 

‘Those memories are no longer the same ones you had before.’ 

‘Indeed? They don’t seem different. Though, I do think it interesting that eyewitnesses are still considered key evidence in trials when they are infamously unreliable.’ 

‘Suggestible too,’ Downey agrees. ‘Let’s say something traumatic happens and someone asks  _ what colour hair did they have? Was it brown? Blond?  _ And you say oh it was brown. Brown because that’s the first colour suggested. Maybe it had been black or red or blond. Or you think brown because the person talking to you has brown hair.’ 

‘So now they’re looking for a brown haired villain.’ 

‘Exactly.’ 

‘When really they’re black haired.’ 

‘Precisely. Memory is deeply unreliable. We make new ones, too. Ones that didn’t exist.’ 

Vetinari sighs an oh yes. That he knew. He provides an example: Madam told him about a red sweater he was partial to as a boy - very young, we’re speaking three and four years old - and yet, because she’s talked about it often enough, he has memories of the sweater. Or created memories of it. He knows they must be falsified because he was too young to mark the red sweater as important. 

‘But her shoes were,’ Downey says. He snuffs out the fag and sits up. 

‘I liked the colours and thought they were fancy. I was older, five I think. We were in Genua.’ 

Downey flashes a smile, fishes for his shift on the floor and begins the gradual process of dressing again. 

‘Turnips?’ Vetinari prompts. ‘Your earliest memory?’ 

‘Maybe. When I go early enough they sort of meld together in terms of the timeline.’ 

  
  


Grey Gardens is a case with no bodies and many bodies. They are piled up in the Watch morgue but they have nothing to tell. How do you solve a murder when there’s no body? There is only a yellow dress, a red shoe with a buckle, teeth smiling like the moon, dead grins. Was it poison? Strangulation? Suffocation? Exsanguination? Some violence does not go so deep as to penetrate bone. Some violence you cannot read after decomposition. 

When the bones show violence, it can be unclear if it happened before or after death. That severed hand, was it before or after? That skull with a hole in it, before or after? 

Without answers the bodies say little. So little they might as well have empty holes in the ground, empty holes in the wall, in the floor. Deprived of story. 

  
  


‘I think this has stumped even our most erstwhile detective,’ Vetinari says. He’s sitting at the desk in his office and looks for all the world as if he has been there all night. ‘I believe they call them “cold cases” which amuses.’ 

Downey screws up his face. ‘There must be a better pun.’ 

‘I don’t think they mean it as a pun.’ 

‘Well,’ he huffs. ‘Pardon me.’ Tucking his hat under his arm he drops a kiss on Vetinari’s mouth to spite the man’s mildly annoyed expression. ‘Remind me to bring you your book next time.’ 

‘Which book is that? You returned the last one.’ 

‘I picked it up at my mother’s. It’s an essay collection and seemed something you’d like. Do you need a quilt?’ 

‘I do not.’ 

‘Fine,’ the hat moves from under his arm to on his head. ‘I’ll off-load it on my sister.’ 

He departs through walls, slim hallways, secret panels and down a back staircase into gardens and through them to warm city streets. Despite the autumnal season Ankh-Morpork continues with excessive heat. Downey crawls into bed and falls asleep only after he’s kicked his dogs off and onto the floor. 

  
  


///

  
  


_ The Collected Autobiographies: Essays  _ begins with a lecture given by the author. He was apparently associated with different educational institutions in Quirm and spoke, in this lecture, about the slippage of language and meaning. 

“Language is a signifier and meaning slippage occurs when a signifier leads to another signifier to another to another - never to a signified. This necessitates an inherent indetermination of meaning. Where does that leave us? 

“Communication relies on meaning solidarity. Everyone agreeing one word, one concept means  _ this _ or  _ that.  _ For a rudimentary example the word  _ tree _ means that living thing there that juts up out of the ground, it has bark, it has leaves, there are branches, it photosynthesizes. Pinning down meaning as it slips and making it catch on one thing (this  _ means _ that) is the creation of an anchoring point. What a Genuan scholar called  _ les points de capiton _ and these anchoring points are what allow communication to happen. Anchoring points do not have to be words, they can be symbols (written language), they can be objects even. What is a religious object but an anchoring point for the communication of a certain concept of a certain faith? 

“Understanding occurs because of  _ les points de capiton _ , albeit only in retrospect. Translation is naturally suspect, because of the cultural nuance suffused in all anchoring points.  _ Tree _ in Ankh-Morporkian means more than the plant: there are cultural understandings, expectations, constructs around  _ tree.  _ These understandings, these unspoken communications may not be the same in another language so when you say “my love is like a tree” in Ankh-Morporkian it means a series of signified things. If you turn around and say “mon amour est comme un arbre” it means literally the same thing but symbolically perhaps not. Culturally. Poetically. 

“These examples are overly simplistic. Does the meaning hold? 

“I was twelve when I fell into a  _ redende Reliquiare _ , a speaking reliquary.” 

  
  


///

  
  


Downey deposits the book in Vetinari’s possession after the City Council session saying, ‘I think it’s interesting, but you’ll like it more.’ 

Vetinari reads the first chapter after tea when a lull in the afternoon presents itself. Between planning documents and reports and managing the fervour of life, there are minutes of quietude. He gathers them up, a collector of gentle betweens. 

The first chapter is very theoretical and Vetinari thinks he might have to refresh his knowledge of Calan and Redire’s philosophy of meaning until he gets to the end. 

_ Does the meaning hold?  _

_ I was twelve when I fell into a  _ redende Reliquiare,  _ a speaking reliquary.  _

Aha, there is the autobiographical elements he had been expecting. Marking the page, he goes off and locates his old edition of Calan’s  _ Meanings  _ and Redire’s  _ Memoir of Semiotics  _ and skims his notes lining the sides of the text. Much underlining, much ! next to important sentences, much “this could have been said in half the amount of words used.” 

He smiles. What youthful enthusiasm coupled with youthful annoyance. He now appreciates the careful precision of language used and understands why it sometimes takes a paragraph to carefully say what some would haphazardly spill out in two sentences. Sometimes a person must use language as a scalpel to dissect a thought. Like a surgeon, careful precision is necessary which is not a speedy or easy thing to do or understand. 

He had wanted things in a speedy fashion as a boy. Before he learned patience and the joy of taking time to deeply comprehend. If I can’t understand it in five minutes it’s clearly the writer’s fault, not mine for not taking the time and care to sit with a piece. To work hard to grasp meaning. 

Before it slips away. 

A dry,  _ ha,  _ he closes the books and places them at the side of his desk to take up his work. What is he to spend the dying embers of afternoon on? Cleaning up old city bylaws. His favourite activity. 

_ Actually.  _

Though Downey laughed when he said it in earnest a few months ago. ‘It can’t be,’ Downey said. ‘I assure you it is,’ Vetinari replied, ‘it’s very satisfying.’ Downey was dubious which Vetinari understands. He would be dubious too, looking in from the outside. 

A bylaw about the proper disposal of human remains outside of regulated cemeteries is at the top of the page. How serendipitous. He rings for Drumknott and says he has an appointment with the commander.  

  
  
  


‘Ah, Vimes.’ 

Vimes stares at his usual spot on the wall. 

Vetinari unfolds the morning paper and says in an approximation of a conversational tone, ‘Three more bodies, commander.’ 

This flares up some annoyance in Vimes. Though, to be fair,  _ annoyed _ is his usual state of existence. Vetinari sits with fingers steepled over the paper waiting for more information. When it isn’t forthcoming he says that perhaps the commander has a plan? Has a specific approach in place for addressing the growing number of remains? Maybe a communications strategy with regards to the press? 

‘I keep telling De Worde,’ the name said with distaste, ‘that there’s no reason for concern. They’re all thirty-odd years old and there’s no indication he’s been active since, or that there’s anyone active now.’ 

‘Excellent.’ 

‘They just don’t put it in the paper so then everyone gets scared. We’ve had a rash of “this bloke looks suspicious” reports over the past month which has been taking up our time since we have to respond to them.’ 

‘Dear me.’ 

‘We’re doing our best, sir. Though with this much time passed, the state of the remains, and the nature of the uh, what the young officers are now calling “forensic evidence,” I don’t have high hopes of catching the man.’ 

‘No way the Watch could sniff anything out?’ 

Vimes makes a face but shakes his head. No, it’s the “forensic evidence” he explains. There’s too much of it. There’s old stuff, not as old, recent, fresh. It muddles together. 

‘Tell me, commander, even under the relative disorganization that was my predecessor’s reign--’

‘Absolute gong show,’ _sotto voce_.

‘Yes,’ Vetinari drags the word out. ‘How could seventeen people go missing in a short amount of time and no one report it?’ 

Vimes shrugs. ‘We had all manner of disappearances then. They were generally split between people who skipped town, people who ran off with a lover, and people who had been taken care of by the patrician. Then the myriad and sundry inhumed, fell into a river, slid out a pub’s back door into an alley and never got up etc. And we had no organizational system at the time. Names would be given then would uh,’ he peters off. 

‘Disappear,’ Vetinari offers helpfully.  

‘Yes, sir.’ The commander wears the expression of a man embarrassed and wishing to be elsewhere. 

‘I see. So you could say the killer crept into the shadow cast by Snapcase?’ 

‘Um, you could. I guess that’s one way to look at it.’ 

Vetinari waits. He suspects there’s more.

‘The woman in the yellow dress, Mrs. Amarillo.’ 

Vetinari continues waiting attentively. 

‘We found her husband. He lives across the city and of course is remarried with kids, grand-kids even. He thought she ran off with this fellow who lived in the building who disappeared around the same time. 

‘Anyway, I was wondering how Lord Downey knew her. We tried asking him, sir, but he said something about knowing someone who knew her through about five degrees of separation “back in the day” and was generally unhelpful.’ 

‘I fail to see how I can be of service, commander. We may have attended the Guild around the same time but we didn’t run in the same circles. Although, if I remember correctly, I believe Downey did have a habit of accumulating ever expanding and increasingly diverse groups of acquaintances when he was younger.’ 

‘Did he?’ A suspicious look crawls across Vimes’ face as he mutters, not very discreetly, ‘the man’s about as charming as a dead rat.’

‘Well,’ Vetinari shuffles papers, sliding the list of bylaws under review back to the front of the pile. ‘I am glad there’s no sign of the murderer deciding to do an encore. Carry on, commander. Don’t let me detain you.’ 

  
  


///

  
  


End of the class period for the day brings the deluge of parents dubbed by Downey the Morality Brigade. Well, the deluge is the auditory level of the parents. There are only five in total which is a relatively manageable number so far as concerned parental brigades go. 

Mr. Barnes is particularly opinionated. And shrill. In the last five minutes Downey has developed a better understanding of Vetinari’s desire to pass this group back to him. Not unlike a dead horse being passed between the street fronts of two residences.

No wonder Vetinari is fining people now, Downey thinks. Patently ridiculous, passing refuse back and forth. Though he has hopes this meeting may spur an amusing “after the fact it was funny” story to share.  

Mr. Barnes fist thumps repeatedly on the table. Downey thinks the man should smile more. It would make him more palatable. 

‘Shall I have refreshments sent in?’ Downey interjects when Barnes pauses for breath. He hesitates then refrains from commenting on how being hungry can make a person irrational. 

‘If you must,’ Barnes says. ‘As I was saying, I pay good money for my child to attend this institution. I expect it to be the best on the Disc-’

‘It is. Objectively.’ 

A few titters from the other parents. Downey smiles at them all. He could smile for days. The more their hackles raise the more pleasure Downey takes in the situation. Absurdity pleases him. Parents shouting  _ won’t someone think of the children _ when he is doing precisely that is the peak of educational hilarity.  

‘I’ll get straight to the point.’ 

I wish you would, the Master of the Assassins’ Guild does not say out loud. 

Barnes, ‘Frankly we of the Committee For the Safe, Sanitary and Sacred Education of Our Children--’ 

Downey mouths the word ‘sacred’ in confusion. He makes a note to mock the committee name with Mericet and later, Vetinari. 

‘--believe that the reforms to the science education at the Guild, if one may call them that, are nothing better than smut.’ Barnes colours as he says the word  _ smut _ . ‘There is no reason our children should learn about _ that _ sort of information. Anything to do with reproduction is best attended to in the family. That way we can ensure it is  _ appropriate _ and won’t encourage lewd behaviour.’

The door to Downey’s office opens after a soft knock and a servant appears with coffee, tea, and a small outlay of food all of which are set up on the sideboard beneath windows. A slight bow and the servant withdraws. Behind the concerned parents Alsace and Harold perk up at the movement and smell of food.

‘Please,’ Downey motions to the food and drink. ‘Help yourselves.’ 

The parents glance at each other. The war of “he’s an assassin” and “he’s a gentleman” has begun. Downey watches with great interest. Eventually Mrs. Prier stands and takes up a coffee with milk and sugar. As she doesn’t immediately collapse the others join. 

Downey smiles at her winningly. She narrows her eyes in suspicion. 

‘Mildred is swimming along well,’ Downey says as they wait for the other members of the committee to rejoin them. 

‘Yes, she is a bright child.’ 

‘Hardworking, too. Which is half the battle.’ 

‘Indeed.’ 

‘She seems to have overcome that difficulty from last semester with the other girls in her house. Did she give you any further details? Those involved were all terribly tight-lipped about it.’ 

‘No, your lordship. But you know how girls are.’ 

The others drift back to their seats and Mrs. Prier returns to her stony expression from before. So much for trying to level everyone’s blood sugar. 

‘So,’ Downey says as everyone settles in with gentle clinking of cups on saucers, spoons against china. ‘Just so I understand what your complaints are: you do not want your children learning anatomy?’ 

‘That’s a euphemism,’ Barnes snaps. 

Downey, slowly, ‘no. It’s not. Reproduction is part of human biology. Learning about fallopian tubes and ovaries won’t make a child run out and have premarital sex any more than not learning about it. In fact, I rather suspect knowing the details will help them make more intelligent decisions.’ 

Barnes, the indefatigable spokesperson, ‘My son doesn’t need to know about that.’ 

Mrs. Prier delicately lifts an eyebrow. Downey hopes that he is gaining an ally. 

‘I’m so glad this is only about your son and not a generation of more fully educated young people who are better equipped to make life choices than we ever were.’ 

‘I heard,’ Mrs. Tyler chimes in from behind Barnes, ‘that the students will be learning about birth control.’ 

That is the point when the entirety of the Committee For the Safe, Sanitary and Sacred Education of Our Children erupts in horror. Downey resists the urge to close eyes and rub temples until they’re done nattering about morality and something or other about the Sacred Nature of Childhood, whatever that means. 

‘My daughter is ten!’ One parent says in horror. 

‘It’s for the older students,’ Downey sighs. ‘Sixteen and above.’ 

They fret. Downey thinks he ought to start making agendas for these meetings so he can keep everyone on task. The parents continue to talk over one another, above and around their voices fill the space and Downey is suddenly very tired. He keeps telling himself that there is a funny story to get out of this. He alights on the absurdity that the parents are more concerned about the supposed immorality of their children knowing about their reproductive organs than their children knowing how to murder for money. This entertains him. 

‘We are planning to separate the girls and boys,’ Downey says into the melee of fretting. 

This causes a pause. Are you? They won’t be in the same room when learning such things? 

‘No, they won’t.’ 

Barnes furiously whispers with a few of his cohorts. 

‘And sixteen and up?’ He clarifies. 

‘Yes.’ 

‘And birth control?’ 

Downey equivocates. 

‘Can we see the proposed curriculum before it’s enacted?’ 

Downey says they may absolutely see the curriculum. A copy is produced and handed over. The parents hum over it. Barnes asks if they can keep this to discuss in further detail and Downey, doing a quick cost-benefit analysis of letting them keep it, agrees. 

The group decants. At the door, the last to leave, Mrs. Prier says, ‘you’re already teaching this aren’t you?’ 

Downey hums.

She taps the door frame with gloved hand. It is satin with sheen from afternoon sun.

‘Then it’s already settled.’ 

He balances a hand side to side. 

She nods slowly then says, ‘and if I pull my daughter out?’

‘I wish her the best at her new school. I do have a question.’ 

‘Yes?’ 

‘It’s actually a two pronged question. The first part is: are you all aware the students are taught anatomy as part of their inhumation classes? The second part is: are you all aware that while your children are receiving an excellent, first rate education they are also learning how to kill people for money? Though not all will take the black.’

She rolls her shoulders, an act that makes art of collar bones for she is wearing the latest fashion of a wide, scoop necked dress, full sleeves edged in Quirmian lace, tightly corseted gown pinned up to reveal heavily decorated petticoats. She is shades of blue. 

‘My daughter will not be taking the black,’ she says. 

‘No, I didn’t think so.’ 

‘There is a difference in teaching the human body for the purpose of,’ she pauses for a word. 

‘Science?’ 

‘ _ Science _ . And teaching the human body for the purpose of understanding procreation. When they marry they will learn it all first hand.’ 

Downey taps desktop. He retreated back to stand by it, having seen the group to the door. ‘I think,’ he says after a long pause. ‘We have differing views on how best to equip children for adulthood. I think it’s only fair students learn as much as they possibly can before leaving, on all subjects.’ 

‘There is such a thing as too much of an education.’ 

‘Yes, that is true.’ 

‘And there are some things best discussed at home. Parents know their children, we know when it’s best for them to learn certain things. Not everyone grows at the same time. Some children are mature enough to handle such conversations before others. Parents know when it’s the right time, not teachers. Good day, your lordship.’ Mrs. Prier leaves, her perfume of dried roses lingering after her. 

Downey pours himself a drink and sits down at his desk. ‘Well,’ he says to Alsace and Harold. ‘That could have gone better. Though, I did have the pleasure of learning that we provide a _sacred_ education.’  

Alsace trots over and rests her head on his knee for scratches. 

  
  


///


	3. Chapter 3

The murder of Gene Lovery had been a sensation. Or rather, the rediscovery of her was the sensation. The rediscovery that made everyone realize a murder had occurred. It was an old crime when Downey first heard about it as a boy. It was something his mother remembered, his father, his grandmother. It was one of those crimes people shake their heads over and say _such a shame._

Gene Lovery disappeared one May morning and was never seen again. The dress she wore that day had been yellow, heavy brocade with elaborate designs pricked out in silver. Her petticoats had been soft gold. Her shoes red with a buckle.

It’s always women wearing red who end up dead. It’s like a fairy tale: horrific and terribly symbolic. Of course fairy tales are the accumulation of a cultural psyche distilled into tropes then structured into classic narrative arcs that are easy to remember and repeat. The literature professor at the Guild once told him the fairy tale that stays with you from childhood is the one that displays best all your neurosis.

Downey had replied, ‘Little red riding hood.’

Literature professor, ‘ _Well then_.’

Many interpretations for that one, aside from the usual _don’t go into the forest or a bad man will do bad things to you_ . Downey always thought the important bit, for him, was the wolf in grandma’s skin. As a child he had been morbidly fascinated by the image. As an adult he assumes that the tale merely teaches that sometimes places and people that should keep you safe don’t; things that shouldn’t eat you sometimes do. The _unheimlich_ and all that. Really, he always thought it a reasonable and pragmatic lesson. Healthy paranoia and an early education in trusting your gut reaction.

Gene Lovery’s body was found in the back garden of the house where she had lived with her husband and two children. She didn’t have to go very far to find a bad man who would do bad things. Her skull showed signs of blunt force trauma. She was hit from behind and fell forward. A broken arm suggests perhaps it was down stairs. A fall of some kind was involved. Then she was buried in the back and the family garden grew from her.

Her husband had put it around that she up and left.

 _Coloured Yellow: The Murder of Gene Lovery_ opens with her husband’s story of _once upon a time there lived a family of four and they were very happy. Then one day the wife took off and left, like the cruel ---- she was._

Then it talks about the colour yellow.

 

Downey slogs through the first chapter. It starts slow but the second is better. It talks about dead women. Dead women in stories, dead women on the stage, dead women in art, dead women in songs. So many dead women the world drowns in dead women. He thumbnails the page to pass on to Dr. Gauvin for one of her many _tres moderne_ lectures she likes to give the students in order to be shocking to older staff. Five and twenty, Dr. Gauvin started teaching only last term. Downey likes her some of the time. Other times, he finds her deeply obnoxious.

He reads the third chapter which returns to Gene Lovery and her childhood. So many people to notice her gone and think: something’s not right. Yet not one of them thought to look any closer. Not one thought to peel back familiar wallpaper to see what damp, decaying thing lies beneath.

The chapter ends with her sister, Nicole, saying, ‘I thought she had gotten away. I wanted her to have gotten away. I wanted that so badly I made it real in my head. But it wasn’t real, was it? She was there the entire time but we couldn’t see her. Didn’t want to see her. Because seeing her would mean she was dead and her husband murdered her and we all just stood around and let him do it. But not seeing her -- isn’t that as bad? I sometimes think I’m as guilty of murder as her husband. I wished so badly for her to have escaped that maybe I wished her into the back garden. Maybe my not wanting to see her because that would mean she is dead buried her deeper. I might not have blood on my hands but I do have grave dirt. I didn’t want to see her and so she was not seen.’

Downey shuts the book and with it taps his chin.

Has anyone consulted housing records? Most didn’t sign leases at Grey Gardens, at least not when Downey and Vetinari lived there, for it wasn’t a sort of place where people cared for that sort of thing. Just so long as you paid rent and weren’t a nuisance. But who owned the building?

How do you bury seventeen bodies in a building and not get caught? The smells were pungent, he remembers. He recalls a stain coming through the hallway wallpaper down by his bedroom door. It could only be seen in certain lights and at certain angles but it was a stain nonetheless. Large and from the inside of the wall out.

Seventeen bodies.

The transient nature of the neighbourhood would have helped. As Gene Lovery’s sister said: I didn’t want to see her and so she was not seen.

He thinks about the Quayside Killer, Raymond Foxe, and the women he raped and murdered. Foxe was methodical and, as a Watchman, knew what to do and what not to do. It also meant he could scupper cases from inside the one public body that was supposed to keep people safe from men like him.

Grey Gardens was different. This man hid the bodies. He didn’t want them to be found. Methodical, too, but in a different way. He was a private killer. He hid himself and his victims away. That said, Downey doesn’t subscribe much to trying to read the mind of a killer. The key is to find their habits. Who cares _why_ they do it. What matters is _how_. Because once a killer finds a method that works effectively they generally won’t deviate from it.

And really, Downey thinks, I do have some expertise in this matter.

Though there is a stark difference between an Assassin and what Raymond Foxe was, what Grey Gardens is, there remains an overlapping similarity in all of them find a preference for a certain method or tool and more or less keep to it.

Downey predominantly poisons, and in a particular way too. Vetinari was always partial to stilettos through ribs. Wiggle it around a bit for good measure. Ludo like garroting. Willis, like Vetinari, keen on the stiletto. Cooper poisoned, Creevey smothered, Sump garroted. Part of being a good Assassin is knowing what works best for you and how to use that to your advantage.

Only recently has the Watch realised that between toes are discreet injection sites. Even then, they miss it more often than they catch it. Though, Downey only does that sort of poisoning when he’s been paid a phenomenal amount of money to make it an assassination and not an Assassination.

He works his way back to the ownership question. The public archives may have something. Though, as a functioning collection, they are a thing of recent history. The Guild of Historians and Archivists being severely understaffed until the last decade and even now, the patrician is very _particular_ about what is saved. Historians, the man believes, have the sort of mad mind that must be either tightly regulated or disposed of.

That is for another day. Today he has an inhumation to conduct after dinner then, perhaps, a visit to the palace. He wishes to hear Vetinari’s voice and whether Downey got it right with the book. He wishes to listen to monologues on whatever it is Vetinari’s keen on at the moment, that delightful nerd. He wishes to have his head stop racing for ten minutes. Vetinari remains a cold lake, a steel-blue glacier, a black glass mirror - very calm. Very still. Downey continues in his desire to drown in the other man.

All of this is a good sign, over all. Generally it’s around this point when he decides to sabotage things. So far, he’s tamped down that knee jerk reaction and he plans to continue to kosh that particular habit on the head until it goes away.

 

///

 

With great care and deliberation Vetinari opens his diary and finds the page marked for the present day. He turns it to the _General Note_ section and runs a finger down it. Ah, here it is.

‘I made note that I should tell you about the debacle with the Archchancellor and the disappearing roof of the Art’s Tower.’

He looks over to Downey who is being finicky with a decanter. As it’s evening they’re in half-light of candles. No fire needed with the abnormally warm autumn nights. A Genuan Summer they’re called, these days of lingering heat. Downey’s face in half-light is sharp angles, little softness.

‘You made a note?’

‘It has come to my attention that it is traditional for people to exchange stories about their day and so I have begun to note down the ones I can tell you without disrupting the balance of things.’

Downey looks at him, torn between _really_ and affectionate. Vetinari tsks and goes back to his diary. How very Downey to think something as reasonable as that should warrant any sort of effusive expression.

A whiskey soda appears in Vetinari’s face. He takes it saying he is quite content to not embark on this ritual if Downey wishes not to.

‘Oh no,’ Downey hurries his answer. ‘More than happy. Rituals are important, they keep things in place. I just thought it amusing that you take notes.’

‘If it strikes me at the time, I do.’

‘Is it under the heading of “Things to discuss with Downey should he show up”?’

‘Hardly.’

‘Do I get any sort of heading?’

‘That’d be unwise, don’t you think?’

Downey grins. ‘I thought you wrote all in code.’

Vetinari doesn’t answer. He sips his drink instead. Downey asks if he were to get a heading what would it be? Vetinari draws out his pondering so as to make Downey impatient because it pleases him to do so. The other man huffs, slouches into the chair and drinks half his whiskey.

‘Something to do with accounting, probably. Maybe tigers.’

An eyebrow. Tigers? Vetinari doesn’t reply.

‘Gods you can keep a grudge,’ Downey mutters into the silence. But behind his complaint is a smile that might be a sneer if sneers had capacity for affection. Downey twists his lips into these half-smiles when something tickles him. They’re not, on the whole, pleasant looks. They’re also not public looks.

Vetinari has come to know the public expressions from the private. Oh yes, there’s much crossover for in general Downey is an outgoing, ready for a laugh sort of man. Most often looking to be pleased and so finds much to be pleased about.

 

Exhibit A are a few things that have pleased one William A. Downey, Assassin in the last week in no particular order:

  * a small, grey dog wearing a knitted jumper (This is one of their End of Day conversations: Downey recounting the dogs he has seen);
  * an article about a man in Brindisi who was murdered in a farcical manner;
  * news that a famous literary figure lied about his credentials and is, in fact, a mediocre if not outright terrible writer (though, what a scam artist);
  * a new cheese being sold at the shop around the corner from the Guild;
  * the discovery of rosehip infused gin;
  * the successful reception of a parabola-related math pun;
  * the various cocktails he made with the recently discovered rosehip infused gin;
  * a small, decorative glass gecko that is now on a bookshelf in his office.



 

And now to be added to the list: that Vetinari makes bullet point records of anecdotes to relay when they manage time enough to meet up in an attempt at an approximation of a normal relationship.

Oh, and tigers.

All of this pushed aside - Downey has secret expressions. Private ways of being that he allows few to see and Vetinari likes those small things. Those intimacies. The sneering smiles and smiling sneers, all the little ugly expressions. The lack of performing gentleman, performing Assassin. The lengthy musings on plants, fungi, parasites, all sorts of biological specimens and topics that Downey generally refrains from in public life. His “critical loci,” as he calls them. Others might term them obsessions or long term fixations.  

Vetinari doesn’t much care about that. What matters to him is that they’re well organized critical loci. Vetinari appreciates organization. He suspects it’s why things between them function better than anticipated. They’re both men who are keen on organization.

‘So,’ Downey prompts. ‘The Archchancellor and the Art’s Tower.’

Vetinari leans back, feels Mr. Fusspot bump against his leg for attention, unwinds the story - a spindle and thread.

 

///

 

Midday and the public records office is a dismal sight and the staff scuttle into order when Downey enters. He takes his hat off, dusts the already accumulated dust from it, and asks for all the housing records from thirty years ago. He names the neighbourhood then seats himself at a free desk space. The staff look at one another before one is hustled into the stacks to find what his lordship asked for.

Piles are dredged up for him, boxes, accordion files. Musty, some eaten through by mold or worms. Holes bored through a stack of ten speak of their lack of use. The handwriting has faded so it’s dull brown against yellowed paper, and older still parchment.

One staff member in particular hovers. After making her wait a good few minutes Downey looks up with a mildly interested expression. How may he help her?

‘We’re just wondering if there’s anything else you need, sir. Your lordship.’

‘Coffee wouldn’t be amiss.’

She squeezes her hands together, ‘There’s no liquids allowed when archival information is present, sir. I’m sorry, sir.’

‘A wise policy. And if that is the case, I’m fine, thank you.’

She lingers some more.

He stares at her. She finally asks in a rush, ‘I thought the Guild was off such cases, sir. Of course it makes sense that you’re involved, sir, given the time and the resources needed but we all heard that the Patrician had uh…’ she stalls.

‘The Patrician had decided that the job of capturing multiple murderers falls under the jurisdiction of the Watch?’

‘Yes, sir, that’s it, sir. That’s what we heard, sir. But honestly, sir, I think it’s fine just this once. You know, sir, considering.’

‘Yes.’

She appears to realize she’s holding him up so bows and scoots back over to the cluster of desks at the far end of the room. Her colleague leans over and they whisper animatedly together.

Downey sighs as he dives back into the files. If that becomes a rumour and escapes these walls both Vimes and Vetinari would hassle him about it. He lifts his head, beckons the young woman over.

‘To clarify,’ he says. ‘I’m not here about the Grey Gardens case in that capacity.’

Her face falls. Downey decides he likes her. She seems a reasonable, if nervous, sort of person. The nervousness could be a product of his presence, though. Also a reasonable reaction.

‘But,’ he continues. ‘I do share your sentiment on the matter. However, hands are tied. This is more out of personal curiosity.’

‘Killed the cat.’ She clamps a hand over her mouth.

He is affable, ‘it did, indeed. But, I suspect this is one of the times where that won’t be the case.’

She bobs her head, bows a second time, and departs to her desk. Again, the animated whispers as she imparts the additional information to her colleague who also looks dismal about the apparent change on Downey’s modus operandi. Sensible people, archivists.

 

In the Gene Lovery murder there weren’t extensive records to search through in order to write the book _Coloured Yellow_. The murder occurred in a time before an established newspaper, when single-print-run broadsheets dominated and word of mouth was the most common form of transferring news. While people will still hail you for the news when you enter a pub in the modern day, it is more for camaraderie and tradition than news gathering.

In Gene Lovery’s time, well over sixty five years ago, neighbourhood grape vines were the way to pass along information. That and weekly sermons at the local temple where afterwards families would gather in the courtyard to trade gossip and talk shop. The overall lack of public education meant letters weren’t a regular source of information sharing, and if they were, it was not private. You would dictate to someone who could write and the recipient would have someone who could read, share it aloud.

Gene’s family, however, were merchants. It’s possibly why Downey’s mother gathered threads of the story as best she could for Gene’s life could have been hers. And possibly was, in some ways.

As merchants, Gene’s family would have been educated. They would have been able to leave behind letters, diaries, ledgers - anything that gave a whisper of proof of Gene’s life beyond the bones eventually found. And the dress. The pretty yellow dress.

The author of _Coloured Yellow_ notes the limitations of archival evidence. The book is as much an exploration of word-of-mouth tales as it is a look at one woman’s death. The only textual evidence to go off of was the sister’s diary and a few paragraphs in a surviving broadsheet about a body being found. In those scant lines a very light picture is drawn.

Husband Ralph, _She ran off. I swore she had left. That’s what we all thought_.

Sister Nicole, _It can’t be her. She left. She got - that is she left._

Neighbour Louise, _It’s the boys I feel sorry for. Her two little lambs. Though I won’t say I’m surprised what happened to her. The way she was, and all. Well, you know how her sort of women can be._

Mother Harrieta, _I new she hadn’t gone off. I knew my Genie wouldn’t do that. Not to her Mic and Kit. Not to her family. She might have been -- well she was the way she was. But she would never leave._

Neighbour Mary, _She was a firm-sort of woman. Yes, she was that. Though I didn’t know her but to pass the time of day._

What sort of woman was she? What sort of way was she? She was the sort of woman who disappears and no one thinks too much about it. The sort of woman people expect to disappear and so make excuses for.

 

Only four records exist pertaining to ownership of the Grey Gardens. The first is a several hundred year old land deed to the original family who built the manor that would eventually become apartments, a rooming house, a bordello, and now a theatre. The second is the sale of the house from the original family to a Lord Fauntleroy which occurred a little over a century ago. The next is more recent, from seventy years ago, and it’s a copy of a record of sale between Mrs. A. McLeod and Mrs. L. Shute. The fourth is the purchase of the building and land by the Ankh-Morpork Theatre Company. The seller is listed as: F.W. Caroling.

‘Do you have addresses?’

The young woman who was enthusiastic about possible inhumation shakes her head. Strictly archival. If you need to contact someone in particular the post office is the best bet. Or just ask around. What’s the name? He provides it. She shakes her head, never heard of her.

‘But my gran knows everyone in that area, sir,’ she says. ‘If you want an address, she’ll know it.’

‘That would be most helpful, Ms.--’

‘Liza Moore, sir.’

‘Ms. Moore.’

‘My gran lives here,’ she scrawls the address down on a piece of paper. She adds that he should just say that “wee Liza” sent him around and maybe hint he’s out to inhume the killer. Her gran will be more receptive to that. Even if it isn’t true.

Downey thanks her, and asks before he goes, ‘has the Watch gone through all of this?’

‘Oh yes, first thing, sir. But I don’t think they got very far, sir. You saw the state of the files, sir.’

‘Indeed.’ He touches the brim of his hat, ‘ta. And thank you.’

 

///


	4. Chapter 4

And the first glimpse of autumn comes on an evening breeze. Vetinari sits in the Oblong office with one window propped a fraction open for air circulation as having many concerned citizens and civil authorities in a room throughout the day causes stuffiness.

From that window a cool gust sneaks in. Vetinari looks up. It brings the smell of Ankh-Morpork but behind the city is the cold of the Ramtops, where winter winds rush down over the plains, over the city, then out to sea making tempests and winter storms that wreck ships along coast line.

Mr. Fusspot, evidently smelling the change, snuffles in his nasally way then rolls around in his bed. Vetinari half-pets him with his foot as he resumes work.

The streets are still not sorted. The streets will never be sorted. They will always be refuse-filled and stinking. Or icy and snow-drift ridden in particularly bad winters and this winter is forecasted to be particularly bad.

The last bad winter was two years ago. It was full of black ice and days so cold it hurt to breath. Trees in Hide Park shattered. The homeless dead were hidden away in the Watch mortuary to be buried when the ground defrosted. It was the kind of winter that brings about a population boom nine months later.

Vetinari considers social services while staring at road works. The roads can wait. He rings for Drumknott and has him bring in all files on city confraternities. He quickly specifies: the active ones. They are duly retrieved. He passes by the ones supporting orphans and widows, the elderly of certain guilds, and so on until he finds the one he was after. The Confraternity for the Relief and Care of the Poor and Homeless.

Taking out the papers he skims the list of members and finds a few names of the wealthy, many of whom are members to add some polish to their family money, although there are one or two who do have merit as charitable workers.

‘Drumknott.’

‘Yes, sir?’

‘Please schedule a two hour meeting with these gentlemen, and gentlewoman, at the end of the week. In the morning if possible.’ He hands the list over. ‘That will be all.’

Drumknott goes out.

Most confraternities are linked to certain guilds or professions. For example, the confraternity that provides relief for orphans and young girls without dowries has its members drawn primarily from the Guild of Teachers, the Seamstresses, and a few of the trades (mostly coopers, shipwrights and ropemakers). The one that concerns itself with convicts facing execution draws from the Assassins Guild, again a broad range of trades (carpenters, blacksmiths and glaziers), and the priestly profession. It goes on.

For the one dedicated to poor and homeless relief it is Merchants Guild, Farriers, various priestly profession, and the Dyers. Many of the names on the list have their guild association marked next to it and the amount their guild provides to support the work of the confraternity.

One name on the list stands out: Amos Downey, Merchants Guild (Deceased).

Vetinari considers how much he wants to annoy Downey the younger. The Assassins’ Guild was recently left a fine legacy by a former member in the form of a plot of land near Hide Park. A plot of land that, should the Assassins’ Guild feel charitable, could serve Vetinari’s purpose well. He decides to bide his time. Wait until Downey is in a charitable mood which strikes once every six months when something of his merchant background comes and rears its head. Downey blames the bouts of charity on his father who was a resolute member of at least three confraternities and every Guild charitable committee available.

If there’s irony or bitterness in that, Downey never shows it. Except once, when he called his father “a pillar of society” with a sneer. To be exact, Downey said, ‘oh yes there were lots of people to see him off. My father was _a pillar of society_ after all. Well, at least in his sphere of society.’

All of this to say: Vetinari thinks Downey due for a bout of charity sometime soon. Preferably in the next two weeks.

Getting up, he shuts the window, takes up a candle, tucks a stack of papers under his arm and departs for his bedroom with Mr. Fusspot trotting behind with the heavy, awkward gate of all small, round dogs.

 

By half one Vetinari is reading in bed, thinking an early night is in order considering any time Downey comes over things have a habit of elongating themselves. Time wise. Mostly, the man lingers. Has a smoke. And talks. And sleeps. And wakes up and fusses around for his clothes. Then sometimes he falls back asleep again. Then he wakes up “for real this time,” fusses with Mr. Fusspot then departs.

It’s a bit of a to-do.

Downey’s always been a bit of a to-do, he thinks with affection.

He opts for _Collected Autobiographies_ over _Murder Most Fowl_ . Mostly because Downey has taken to reading _Murder Most Fowl_ and lost Vetinari’s place holder. He is also further ahead from where Vetinari left off and keeps announcing things as he reads.

 

(One night a week ago:

Downey, reading, ‘I knew Eli was evil.’

Vetinari, also reading, ‘please stop spoiling the book.’

Downey, ‘sorry.’ Not ten minutes later. ‘Oh Karen you devious woman.’

‘Downey.’

‘Sorry...Gods, of course there’s incest.’

 _‘Downey .’_ )

 

Vetinari opens _Collected Autobiographies_ to where he left off and settles in.

The author asks: how can a person write about themselves? When you write of yourself you are only capturing a single facet. You are not writing the entirety of all the selves that inhabit your one body. There must be a collection of autobiographies for one autobiography is a lie. There is never one person.

The author writes:

 

 

> “‘Don’t we all become something of our child-selves when we are with our parents? Even if it is unintentional. Aren’t we one way with a lover and another with friends? There are overarching threads of truth in all of these persons but each has enough uniqueness to warrant their own biography.
> 
> “Me with my parents warrants writing. Me with my wife warrants another. Me with my children, with my friends, with my parents when I’m an adult and they’re very old. Why should I be contained within one work? I am a collection.
> 
> “But if we are collections does that mean there is no _true_ us? Does identity slip, the way meaning can? Can identity go from signifier to signifier but never to signified? If words slip and we use them to catalogue ourselves can we then slip too? We fall somewhere outside or between meaning. We have selves that are hidden away from meaning. That are kept in shadows, never shown to the light, never bestowed words.”

Vetinari lowers the book, carefully slotting in the bookmark. He feels too warm and suddenly full of energy. He thinks he should work, but it isn’t a working energy. No, no it’s a nervous kind. The sort one feels when seasons change which is fitting. Since it is. He dresses and, after petting Mr. Fusspot, presses palm against a panel of wood sliding open a small door. He disappears into the dark.

 

 

The rooms of the Master of the Assassins’ Guild are set up thusly: a formal office with worn, but expensive furniture. Large, airy windows line one side of the wall with a sideboard beneath. There is a desk. It is neat. There is a drinks cabinet and display case taking up the wall behind the desk. Bookshelves run the length of the room opposite the windows. Within them a stately oak door that has seen several hundred years of service that leads out to hallways, offices, classrooms. Down the room from the desk is a fireplace, a low table, a chair, a couch. Usually two large, hairy dogs sprawled somewhere between desk and fireplace. Between fireplace and windows find a door that leads to private quarters. Between fireplace and bookshelves find nothing but wood panels. The space is pristine. Perfectly organized, light, high ceilings, comfortable it conveys understated wealth and grandeur.

It embodies the ideal performance of the grace of assassins.

Historically, masters of the guild have taken up an entire wing for their private apartments. And those with a family are still able to do so if they wish to disrupt a few classrooms. However, the current situation is more contained and has been for the last five guild leaders. It seems, as the guild grows as an educational institute, the more often it elects unmarried leaders. Fewer rooms needed, a somewhat smaller salary (by a sliver), more time to dedicate running things, no torn allegiances.

As it stands, the private rooms consist of a sitting area which is also a partial office. There’s a fireplace, the mirror of the one in the public office, a few chairs in front of it, a desk in the corner facing the windows, book shelves along the opposite wall from the windows. There are many, many plants. Only some of which won’t kill you. Potting soil lingers on tables lining the windowed walls. There are cupboards for drying specimens. Trays of seeds sprouting. Papers and notes pinned to the one un-occupied wall. In a corner near the fireplace a smaller drinks cabinet is stashed which is also currently home to a collection of cacti. All those who wish to drink port be wary.

A door built into the bookshelves leads to a small hallway with a room on the left and a smaller one to the right. Downey has turned the smaller one into something of a lumber room and also where he puts Alsace if she becomes too excited about the presence of many humans which has been known to happen.

Downey’s room is also plant-laden. Less poisonous, though. Except for the orchids.

Vetinari, leaning over Downey, prods him awake then steps back to avoid the side effects of waking an assassin without warning.

‘Fuck off,’ is muttered into the pillow.

‘I’m always delighted to see you, too,’ Vetinari replies.

Downey mumbles something, face still pressed down into pillow. Vetinari considers this a reasonable invitation and so seats himself on the bed and looks down at the other man who has taken to making a rude gesture.

‘I was thinking about Grey Gardens,’ Vetinari explains.

This prompts Downey to roll over. He gropes at the side table for his pocket watch and checks the time.

‘It’s half one,’ Vetinari says helpfully.

‘I’m teaching tomorrow morning.’

‘I won’t be half a minute. Now, I was considering the important question: Why would the Grey Gardens killer hide the bodies where he lived? That seems risky. Especially in a boarding house where many people lived and quite a few of the residents were without a set schedule.’

Downey sits up, rubs his face and attempts to manage his hair which is met with minimal success. ‘Why are you bothering me at one in the morning about this?’

‘It occurred to me that some approaches to this case are being overlooked.’

‘Oh?’

‘I heard you were in the city archives asking after land records for Grey Gardens.’ This is said as if it is an explanation.

‘Was it the chipper yet nervous girl who punctuates her sentences with an excessive amount of “sir’s” that passed it on to one of your dark clerks?’

‘I can’t say,’ Vetinari hums. He pauses as Alsace appears from the corner of the room and plants her head on the bed with longing eyes. ‘I think she wants to come up.’

‘She’s not allowed. She gets hair everywhere. I’m trying to encourage her and Harold to remain on the floor.’

‘Nice quilt.’

‘Thank you.’

Vetinari ponders how to go about this. It was something in the _Collected Autobiographies_ that clicked: _We have selves that are hidden away from meaning. That are kept in shadows_ […] Any conversation around identity is necessarily complex and informed by one thousand and one little things, and a few very big things.

Identities do slip, so to speak, and sometimes a person slips so far as to leave what is deemed civil for the uncivilized. Although, civilization is merely what we know for we know only the truth of where we live. Regardless, Vetinari decides to keep to the distinction of civil and uncivil rather than humane and inhumane. Treading down _that_ path allows men to separate themselves from such people as Raymond Foxe and Grey Gardens killer when the inescapable fact is: these men _are_ merely human.

Perhaps Raymond Foxe began life as a relatively normal child. Perhaps something happened to make him slide into the person he became. Perhaps it was the same for the Grey Gardens killer. Or, perhaps they were born with something not clicking correctly in their head. When a watch has one spring off balanced, one cog not tuned correctly, the entire mechanism breaks down. It is the same for the human mind.

Oh, he doesn’t mean the usual everyday issues of melancholy and anxiety and obsession - those are normal, expected variations of the brain. A person can be depressed and an alcoholic but they’re still within society. A person can be anxiety ridden and unable to function in a way that allows them to maintain a job but they’ve not left the world of civility. All of those issues and lived experiences are normal. Maybe they could use some help, but on the whole, it’s part of the human condition. No, he means the minds that have stopped working so much that you become separate from society, from civility.

This is what is missing from the investigation into Grey Gardens: motivation.

Downey is a patterned thinker, as is the commander for that matter, which makes them effective in linear situations of a to b to c and so on. Cyclical, patterned situations. Downey especially, as one of nature’s predators, dissects habits and recurring patterns. Animals take the same path, deer have preferred grazing spots, carnivores have game trails, they all come to the same hole to water - humans take one way to the market another way home. They make patterns even when they don’t mean to. Even when they’re trying not to. The output of the behaviour is what interests Downey, not the _cause_ of the output.

But in this situation, cause matters as much as the output. The thought patterns that elicit certain behaviour will tell you how to find a man who has disappeared himself for thirty years.

When he was a good deal younger Vetinari had made the mistake of considering Downey unintelligent. This was mostly to do with the fact that Downey would show up in his life mostly to yell “eyyup Dog-Botherer, cat got your tongue?” while jetting the closest projectile object straight at Vetinari’s face. Such interactions do little to imbue any confidence in one’s abilities.

However, since the follies of their youth Vetinari has learned many things. One of them being: Downey isn’t unintelligent. Instead, it’s that he thinks differently. (And is prone to obsessing over odd things like bugs and plants and biological systems in a way Vetinari doesn’t quite fully understand but finds mildly fascinating.  But that’s an aside.)

Downey has always loved the _hows_ , Vetinari the _whys._

(Also, he finds nature full of unnecessary liquids and bodily expulsions and so is therefore content to hear about it from Downey which keeps a respectable distance between him and the outdoors. But that, too, is an aside)

‘I’ve been trying to figure out how he chose his victims,’ Downey prompts through a yawn. ‘All women, so far as I’m aware.’

Vetinari nods, good that’s a start. But perhaps there’s another angle at which to approach this. The man is done murdering, right? He’s presumably finished all that, so it’s not future victims we’re attempting to protect. What we need to do is figure out where he is now, today. And for that it might be helpful to figure out how he thinks.

‘We?’ Downey prompts with a wicked grin. Vetinari purses his lips. He shan’t dignify Downey’s jabs with a response. This makes Downey laugh as he slides further down so he’s almost horizontal again.

‘What did Raymond Foxe do with the bodies?’ Vetinari asks. ‘He left them to be found. He didn’t hide them away, there was no secret keeping of the dead. Instead, he left them out for all to see. It’s almost a form of boasting. _Look at me. Look at what I’ve done._ And when he was found, where did the Watch pick him up?’

‘At home.’

‘He was living very openly, correct? He wasn’t in hiding. He was using his own name. Indeed, he was even a member of the Watch, so he was bold. He was arrogant. He was sure of himself. The Grey Gardens man, on the other hand, hid the bodies away. Was it out of fear? Perhaps he didn’t wish to be caught and end up like Foxe. Or was it something deeper? A neurosis. A psychological tic that made burying important.’

Downey murmurs, ‘they say the fairy tale you remember best from childhood is the one that represents all your neurosis.’  

Vetinari blinks. Oh?

‘Mine was red riding hood. What was yours?’

He has to think about this. Then, slowly, ‘I don’t remember Madam ever telling me fairy tales when I was a child.’

‘Typical.’

‘But of the few I heard I always liked the one about the twelve dancing princesses.’

‘That’s the one with the overbearing father and the servant who narcs on them?’

‘Ye-es.’ Vetinari realigns his thoughts. ‘The servant who narcs on them.’ He snorts, looks to the ceiling. Gathering up the conversation Vetinari says that it’s the psychology of the individual that will help you find the man. ‘He’s hiding, especially now that the bodies have been found. But where is he hiding?’

‘Could be anywhere.’

‘No, he’ll have a reason for hiding wherever it is that he has ensconced himself. This man was methodical and bold, in his own way. Not Foxe, display-based boldness, but a tempting-fate kind of boldness. He kept the bodies close to him. He kept them in a place where, if they had been found while he lived there, could have pointed the finger to him. That’s a risk taker. A risk taker who likes to keep away from the light.’

Downey yawns, rolls and wraps his arm around Vetinari’s waist. Fingers start playing with shirt fabric, tugging upwards. Vetinari, terribly prim, ‘we’re discussing murder, Downey.’

Downey into Vetinari’s side, ‘most people sneak into other people’s rooms at one in the morning for reasons other than conversation. Conversation that could have waited until morning I might add.’

‘I am making a delineation between public and personal.’

‘Um --’

‘I want this man found. I was attempting to give you pointers since you seem to be poking around.’

‘It was purely personal curiosity, as I thought the Guild wasn’t to meddle in such matters. To my understanding, _that_ such work is now in the Watch’s jurisdiction.’

‘I shall ignore your petulant tone. Downey please pay attention.’

Downey’s hand retreats from between Vetinari’s legs where it had wandered.

‘I’m paying attention. I can multitask.’

‘I’m hiring you to inhume a serial killer. I thought you’d be ecstatic.’

‘I am. Terribly so.’ Downey arranges his face into a suitable expression as he sits up, ‘why the change of view?’

‘I suspect anything the Watch finds won’t hold up in a court of law. Therefore, it isn’t a situation that can necessarily be handled in the manner I would normally prefer. Understand,’ Vetinari underlines this word with a shake of a finger. This annoys Downey so he curls it in, tucks the hand away between them. ‘This is an exception to the rule. I’m hiring you on a personal basis. Not as the patrician but as a private citizen.’

‘Understood.’

‘The general policy with regards to the Guild and serial killers remains. It’s under the purview of the Watch.’

‘But as private citizen Havelock Vetinari you’re taking out a contract, don’t worry I follow.’ Downey grins at him, one that is wicked and self-satisfied. ‘Fees will be high.’

‘I wouldn’t expect otherwise.’

‘I’ll draft up an estimate. Usual Guild policy applies in that the final cost may change depending on the circumstances.’

‘Naturally.’

Downey slides down to a horizontal position once again. He inquires if there’s a chance of anything else happening tonight or is Vetinari just in a chatty mood? Vetinari replies that he thought Downey appreciated his company. Downey says of course he does. Naturally. He says Vetinari is like a cool glass of water. Vetinari informs Downey he’s been reading too many bad detective novels. Downey asks whose fault is that?

Their conversation becomes ridiculous. Vetinari thinks he should leave. Downey’s winding an arm around his waist and saying he should stay a while. The sky remains the velvet of deep night. Not yet is there the watercolour of morning. Vetinari pushes Downey onto his back, kisses him open mouthed, ignores the warmth garnering in the pit of his stomach that grows with Downey’s hand clutching the hair at the back of his head. He slides over Downey to the side of the bed nearest the window.

‘I’ll be off. Send the estimate around when you have a moment.’ Vetinari adjusts clothes, corrects his hair, as he walks towards the bedroom door. ‘Really, you only have yourself to blame for this entire situation.’

‘How so?’

‘You gave me that book of collected essays which triggered a thought that led to this moment. I could go back further, though, if you’d like.’

Downey pleasantly replies, ‘no I would not like. My complaints aside, it’ll be my pleasure to find our former neighbour. Pet Mr. Fusspot for me.’

Vetinari watches him settle into bed. Alsace gives them both disappointed looks as no one paid her the least bit of attention before retreating to her bed in the corner. The door closes with a whisper of air. Vetinari slips through nighttime streets a shadow within a shadow of a shadow. Hidden, not wanting to be known.

 

///


	5. Chapter 5

That small, night breeze that brought only a hint of autumn turns into a full cool wind prompting citizens to tuck scarves into coats to secure them. A few fly away, become tangled in lamp posts or are lost, trodden into dirt or cobbles.

Downey greets Angua as she slides into a back corner table at the Black Dog pub. In a part of town she never frequents, she has made sure to be in her civvies with no hint of Watchman about her. Though, Downey suspects it isn’t possible to wash _cop_ off of one’s person in entirety. However, beyond the expected, mildly affronted “you’re not a usual, and you’re a woman” expressions, no one has paid her much mind. Nor him, for that matter. But that’s probably to do with his occupation. The kind of people in this kind of pub tend not to make eye contact with lords or assassins let alone lords who are assassins.

‘The commander will go postal if he knows I’m here,’ Angua hisses.

‘That’s nice. Glad his anger management continues to be non-existent. That’s always the sign of a healthy individual. And how is your boyfriend? That strapping orange-haired fellow,’ Downey asks, nursing a stout.

‘He’s well, and he has a name. It’s Carrot, which I swear I’ve told you before. Also, the commander would be well within his right to be angry. I shouldn’t be doing this.’

‘You only have to worry if you get caught. And ah yes, Carrot. That name’s familiar. All cops look the same to me. Fag?’

Angua’s unimpressed but accepts the smoke explaining, ‘I’m only doing this because we’re not getting anywhere fast. On top of this case, there’s been a disappearance of a child and a murder of a shopkeeper. And that’s in the last two weeks. We’re stretched thin.’

They pause to drink.

‘Any more bodies dug up?’ Downey asks.

‘No, nothing new. What do you want to know?’

‘Everything you haven’t told the press. Crime scene reports would be handy.’

‘I’m not smuggling you private Watch files.’

Downey smiles with a great deal of charm. Angua snorts, mutters ‘oh fuck off, that’s not going to work on me.’ Downey sighs that it’s a shame, that works on a lot of people. Very well, verbal descriptions will do.

Angua becomes serious, her mouth in a tight line, ‘again, I’m only helping you because we are overworked and there’s little to go on. It’s a thirty year old cold case, as far as I’m concerned. I want justice for the dead as much as anyone.’

‘You know what will happen to him should I find him?’

‘He’s not seeing another bright new day?’

‘Yes, I rather think he’s not. I wanted to be sure we were on the same page; that this isn’t some find-and-retrieve situation.’

Angua makes a face of yes I know though I’m not very happy about it. Giving her a moment to work through a bit of her pint Downey thinks about bones. They’re the unspoken thing that rests between everyone interested in this case. Which is most of the city. When people speak of the dead, they speak of them as if they still have flesh. As if they’re still knowable. Only one woman has a name and that’s because of her dress, her shoes.

Lucky, in a way, that she had been murdered wearing the same clothes he saw her in.

‘Some of the bones were painted yellow,’ Angua says then abruptly stops. She backtracks saying, ‘Let me start from the top, there were three separate burial spots in the basement plus the few found upstairs on the second floor. The graves were arranged like this,’ she takes out her notebook and flips to a page with a sketch of the basement and the bodies. ‘Head to toe, five in each of the three basement pits then two upstairs. One in the floor, one in the wall. The bodies were arranged with purpose.’

Downey copies down the basement sketch, makes notes about the position of the bodies. Had he seen the basement when he lived at Grey Gardens? No, he doesn’t think so. Therefore hard to say if it was dirt floor or not. ‘Did you note where in the wall and floor the two were?’

She did, the one in the floor was in the centre of the kitchenette area, the one in the wall was towards the back of the apartment.

Downey duly take this down.

 

There is a memory:

He and Vetinari breaking into their neighbour’s flat. The upturned carpet beneath kitchen table. The stains coming through the hallway wall near his bedroom which was at the back of the apartment. The noises.

All those noises.

 

‘Only one severed hand and one skull with signs of violence?’ Downey finishes his pint and sets it aside. ‘Otherwise everyone else unmarked?’

‘That’s correct.’

‘Save for the yellow paint.’

Angua nods. Oh yes, the yellow paint. ‘It’s not on every bone, only some. I assume they’re the oldest as they would had to have decomposed before he could do that.’

Downey shrugs, ‘not necessarily. It takes around ten years for a body to skeletonize if it’s buried in well drained soil. Which packed soil of a basement in our lovely swampy city, isn’t. And in any case, I doubt our man waited that long so he’d have sped up the process.’

Angua coughs. Downey gives her his charming smile and asks if she’d like another round. More of the same? To wash down the thoughts of dead bodies decaying in basements and beneath floorboards.

When he returns to the table with two pints and a bowl of peanuts Angua asks how one would go about speeding up decomposition. Boiling, the most obvious way, seems noticeable in a crowded tenant building.

‘Maggots, beetles,’ Downey replies. ‘Put the body in a bag, add some bugs, let them do their work. Or, if it’s hot enough, bag the body and let heat do the work. You want it in the thirties for optimum rotting. However, if you have the facilities, just sous vide the body for a day or two.’

‘Sous vide the body?’

‘Boiling works just as well. I was thinking if the man wanted to preserve the bones, boiling is harsh on them. And it can cause the fat to seep into them which isn’t desirable. Once the flesh is off, soak the bones in a vat of soapy water to de-grease it.’

‘I see.’

‘Then bleach them, if that’s the effect you’re going for. Soak them for a few hours in hydrogen peroxide. I favour a three per cent solution, personally.’

‘Right.’

Downey, feeling energetic and terribly cheerful, says that if she ever has anything she wants preserved, she can ask. The Guild has equipment. Her face is answer enough and it’s a clear “no thank you.”

He isn’t sure if cops, like serial killers, keep mementos from their careers. Though he doesn’t voice the question out loud not wanting to rub her wrong. Thus far, their brief acquaintance has been one of general, somewhat grudging on her part, amiableness.

‘So,’ she says after some thought. ‘The bones painted yellow could have been any of his victims. Not that it matters, since we can’t pin down an exact timeline.’

‘Mrs. Amarillo was most likely his last.’

‘Was she? How do you know that?’

‘Oh you know, this and that. Anyway, no timeline. That’s a shame. Oh, an additional note for rapid decomposition, aside from heat is blood. A drained corpse takes longer to decompose than one with blood in it.’

‘They teach you all of this when you’re at the Guild?’

Downey shrugs, he’s neither here nor there on it. Some is taught, some is life experience, some is pure curiosity. Angua holds up her hand, stop there. She doesn’t wish to dig too deep into any of those statements as the list of Ankh-Morpork’s missing persons is quite long. Downey’s smile never wavers though he wants to say that the Guild would never stoop to experimenting on someone pulled off the street at random. The inhumed have many roles to play in furthering the cause of a good education.

‘Blood works like a highway,’ Downey explains in the lull. ‘Decomposition is the body being eaten from the inside out, right? All the organisms that live inside of us while we’re alive begin to consume us as soon as the heart stops.’

‘But blood stops moving when the heart stops.’

‘Yes, but it’s there and it’s a liquid and bacteria and other organisms move through it with greater ease therefore they’re able to pass through the body more quickly than if the blood wasn’t present.’ He waves, this isn’t relevant. The man sped up the process of decomposition. That’s what matters. Then he painted some of the bones. ‘Which ones?’

‘The one’s here,’ Angua points to the burial pit at the back of the basement. ‘All had yellow. None of the others did.’

‘And all the bodies were female?’

‘Yes, which is typical.’

‘Indeed,’ Downey hums. He reviews his notes. There’s something in there that bothers him. He can’t put his finger on it, though. ‘All right, so he kills his victims in a manner than doesn’t impact the bones. With one exception. Then buries them, intact, in three separate pits plus a few in the apartment. They’re all women. Any other clothes found beside Amarillo’s dress?’

She counts off a list, ‘one blue smock, a few deteriorating petticoats, a few bonnets, a pink dress, ten yellow shawls, four yellow dresses, aside from Mrs. Amarillo’s--’

‘So he likes yellow.’

‘Yes, the commander thinks there’s something in that.’

‘Vile.’

‘He’d probably say the same about you,’ she’s very pleased. ‘A few sets of shoes were also found. Most were everyday boots but there were a few dancing slippers and one pair of heels with the back painted yellow which the commanders says--’

‘Means she was a seamstress.’

‘I’m so glad sartorial laws have become more lax.’

‘At least it’s not like Brindisi where seamstresses had to wear little bells attached to their clothes so you could hear them coming. Another round?’

She checks her watch, weighs her options, then agrees. Except she’s getting this one.

 

///

 

Vetinari writes a note in his diary, a quote from a poem in a literary publication he occasionally peruses. _Life may be precious and short and singular but style is holy ._

He writes it out with his left hand on a non-descript piece of paper, considers sending it to Downey but burns it instead.

When he tells him, ‘I made a note of something’ then repeats the quote Downey flutters between pleasure and smug vindication.

‘You should read Burkowitz,’ Vetinari says. Downey’s undressing him, they’re in a dimly lit bedroom. It’s Downey’s. Curtains are drawn and there’s a fire in the grate.

‘Why’s that?’

‘He famously said that the answer to everything is style. I think you’d like his work.’

‘He’s not wrong.’

‘Or, if you’d rather read something adjacent to him, Katherine Giodinari is excellent.’

Downey acquaints himself with Vetinari’s collarbone and neck, a hand is down the front of Vetinari’s trousers, another cupping the back of his head. He enjoys the feeling of Vetinari hardening against his palm.

‘Is she a philosopher commenting on another philosopher?’

‘Cultural critics,’ Vetinari says. ‘I think I’d call both of them that. Giodinari is a poet as well.’

Downey pulls him over to the bed. It occurs to Vetinari that Downey is still dressed, an unfortunate state of affairs. He sets about rectifying it.

It’s one of those nights that are endless, the ones Downey calls _Scheherazade nights_. Let’s kick covers off the bed and be as dirty as possible. No one will know. He says this into Vetinari’s neck, his arm, his shoulder, thighs, mouth.

Somewhere between _cultural critics_ and _let me take your clothes off_ they’ve stopped speaking words that have meaning. If you sink into this long enough you forget you’re human. Now - become feeling, become touch, become taste and smell.

Downey, gasping, asks how anyone could think this sort of thing ruinous. Vetinari replies, depends on one’s definition of ruin. One’s threshold for safety.

They lie in a heap of sheets. The room is warm, there’s light peeking between curtains. It’s the milky soft of the moon. Vetinari allows an arm to drift around his waist, a whisper of breath ghost his shoulder. It’s a Scheherazade night. A velvet grey night, Downey says. That’s the colour of it.

It lets them sleep for a while. Until the milky moonlight shifts and dislodges them, dresses them, parts them to different areas of the city.

 

///

 

Yellow is a contradictory colour. It is optimism, unreliability. It is amusement, betrayal. It is joyful, duplicitous. Kings are anointed with gold crowns, but yellow is a marker for treason. In Ankh-Morpork history, when the long dead King Alberto II killed his first wife, the woman who would become his second wore a yellow dress.

It’s the colour Gene Lovery died in. It’s the colour the dead were painted. It’s the colour Mrs. Amarillo died in. Downey can’t help but link the two. He suspects it’s contaminating his thought process.

In his private office is a map of present day Ankh-Morpork and one from thirty years ago. He notes where Grey Gardens is. Picking up the Gene Lovery book he flips until he finds her address. It’s a house that no longer exists but the corner it once stood on remains. Instead of a house there is now a corner grocer. He puts a pin there. It’s on the same block as Grey Gardens.

That must be a coincidence, he thinks. There can’t be a connection. The cases are too far apart.

But Gene Lovery had two boys.

Maybe those boys had children? He flips to the end of the book, hoping for a chapter of family-follow up but there’s only a brief paragraph that provides little useful information. Nothing about possible decendents or surviving family.

He stares at the map. He tries to think about the psychology of the individual. He doesn’t get very far. He remains stuck on how the killer chose his victims.

Other than Mrs. Amarillo, who were these women? People no one would notice missing: seamstresses, family-less, poor, homeless. Though, even Mrs. Amarillo disappeared without much fuss. Everyone wrote it off on her running away with someone. Did her husband even go to the Watch?

‘Not that they would have been useful,’ Downey mutters. Harold, his companion in these twisting thoughts, makes a contented noise and sprawls across the fireplace rug.

‘I suppose it’s the principle of the matter,’ Downey continues to his audience of one. ‘If your wife goes missing, file a report. Even if the local plods won’t get anywhere with it, there’s a paper trail that you tried.’

Maybe her husband killed her and the killer offered to take care of the body.

She is the one that stands out, and coincidentally, the only one they have a name for. Right, Downey takes up his coat and hat, snaps his fingers so Harold rouses himself and they take off into autumnal streets.

 

Mr. Amarillo is relatively easy to find. As a master cordwainer he’s well known, well visited. And now, because of the press, the case, the fact that his wife is the only victim with a name, well famed. He doesn’t bat an eye when Downey asks about the disappearance.

‘Guild taking an interest?’ He asks. He’s shaping leather for a pair of boots. ‘Yours that is, your lordship.’

‘Idle curiosity.’

Amarillo glances up, skeptical. Roughly Downey’s age, his hair is salt and pepper and he’s fleshed out from what Downey can remember. Though he only saw the man a handful of times when they were both living in Grey Gardens. The Amarillos were, perhaps still are, the typical quiet, respectable Ankh-Morpork couple. They kept themselves to themselves and never minded anyone else.

‘She left,’ Amarillo says, reaching for threaded needle. ‘I went to work, I was working in another man’s shop at the time, Walters on the west bank up towards the hubward walls so it was a bit of a walk. When I got home she was gone.’

‘And you thought she had run off?’

‘She used to chat with this young fellow across the hall from us.’ He pauses, squints at Downey. ‘Looked a bit like you, actually, your lordship. I thought maybe they had made plans, she would go off then he would join.’

‘You don’t sound upset about this.’

‘Not to be cold about it, your lordship, but it happened over thirty years ago. I moved on a long time ago.’ A pause, he inspects the stitch work on the leathers and, deeming it sufficient, resumes.

‘What was your wife’s name? Your first wife.’

‘Matilda, your lordship. Her father was a dyer and ran with some wilder types and she was happy to be free of him. Her mother died when she was young so she was left with the caring of the family.’

Downey watches the man’s careful fingers, so firm but delicate with the stitches. The boots are riding boots and have markings for a pattern to be tooled into them. He remarks that they will be a handsome pair when finished. Amarillo sits back and looks at the set. He nods, oh yes, they’ll be handsome. Ordered by the head of the Merchant’s Guild, Mr. Thurrough.

‘I’m sure he’s a thorough sort of man.’

Amarillo does not appreciate the joke. This saddens Downey - what kind of man is Mr. Amarillo? What kind of man doesn’t appreciate a bad pun? Vetinari likes bad puns and that man has one of the most eclectic senses of humour Downey has ever come across. One never knows what he will find amusing.

Amarillo, dry as old leather, asks if his lordship needs anything else?

‘Did your wife have any friends? Associates?’

‘No,’ snapped. ‘She was a quiet woman, a good homemaker.’

‘What about other tenants? Other than the man across the hall from you.’

‘I always thought he was strange. Him and that friend of his. The friend was a right skinny little thing. They were always looking at people as if they were plotting something. You want my bet on who the murderer is? I would put money on it being those two.’

‘One of whom you presumed your wife to have run off with?’

‘They’re charming, aren’t they? Serial killers.’

Downey decides that the plethora of yellow back novels and shoddy street-side theatre about murderers is doing everyone a disservice. He says that no, not always. Depends on the kind of killer the person is. There are a few distinct categories one can drop a serial killer into. But that’s neither here nor there - what about other tenants.

Amarillo shrugs, he can’t recall many of the others. There was that mother on the first floor with a few children. He doesn’t recall seeing a man around. There might have been a mother and daughter on the second floor. It’s all a blur. He can’t remember.

‘Anyone on your floor? Someone your wife might have spoken to?’

‘No,’ he shrugs. ‘None that I can remember. Other than the one across from us.’

As his minimal warm welcome is long over, Downey takes his leave. Thanks the gentleman for being generous with his time. This can’t have been a pleasant reminder of the past, &tc. &tc.

  


Harold, trustworthy companion, found a stick to chew while Downey was inside the shop. It being possibly larger than the dog makes the hound’s ability to follow difficult.

‘Put it down,’ Downey orders.

Harold is morose.

‘Now.’

The stick drops. Harold looks at it then at Downey.

‘I don’t know what you want me to do about it.’

Harold pants.

‘Come on.’

The dog grudgingly trots forward. Downey mirrors the downtrodden mood of Harold. He hadn’t expected much from Mr. Amarillo, but it was still annoying. At least he had a name. Matilda Amarillo.

And an address. He fishes out the scrap of paper he jotted down the address of the archivist’s grandmother. She lives in the neighbourhood of that old hulking building. Turning, he begins the trek towards that area of the city. He’s hoping to land a name of the woman who they rented from. The landlady, for lack of a better word. If he can find her maybe he can get a name for their neighbour then there will at least be something to go off.

Psychology of the individual be damned. He thinks he should tell Vetinari that he should never quit his day job to take up being a private investigator.

He suspects the jibe might rankle. He sets it aside.

  


///


	6. Chapter 6

The discovery of Gene Lovery’s body caused one of the most thorough Watch investigations of its time. Not until the last decade had Ankh-Morpork seen a more well organized and thorough use of Watch forces.

By the time she was dug up from the back garden her husband had moved house and her sons were grown with children of their own. A forty year old grave with a stained yellow dress. What can you do with such a thing?

But scour the city the Watch did. Pick and pull and pilfer through every possibility of who her killer could be. Neighbours side-eyed one another; family conferred, formed ranks, looked horrified when one young sergeant of the Watch asked: _And her marriage? Do you recall if it was a happy one?_

After someone dies all marriages become happy. All wives loving, all mothers doting, all husbands hard working, all fathers caring.

  


Downey visits his mother after his brief interview with Mr. Amarillo. He’s turning over the man’s minimal statement as his mother hems over whether or not to have a gin.

‘Go on,’ he says when he realizes he’s been silent too long. ‘I’ll have one, too.’

‘But it’s only half three.’

‘It’s five o’clock somewhere. I’ll make us a drink. A twist of lime?’

She’d love a twist of lime.

They experience a familiar silence, still unsure of how to be around each other even though they’ve had a year. An entire year, only just a year.

‘You’ve been keeping well? I notice you visit every week and a half.’ She takes a sip, face knotting then relaxing. She calls the gin _herbaceous_.

‘I can come less, if you’d like.’

‘Oh no,’ she flutters. Her hands touch the glass, they touch the book in her lap, the fringe of her shawl. ‘I like it.’

When she looks at him it’s like she’s trying to see something. She’s searching him, perhaps she wonders if she’ll see the boy, the young man, she had known thirty years ago. It’s a painful expression. Downey dislikes it. He focuses on her watch which hangs from a chain around her neck. It’s the same one he remembers staring at as a child. She would sit him down after a mishap and explain things to him in that soft, serious tone of importance. He’d stare at her watch, her nails, the ring around her finger, the patterned dress, patterned petticoats beneath, peeking out from where she’d pinned up her skirts.

Piecemeal.

How do you form a relationship with someone you should have known your entire life? Isn’t there something like a gods given right to have a relationship with your mother? Who has the right to take that from you? Fathers, apparently. And your own cowardice. He has spent much of his life being a coward. It’s a difficult habit to unlearn.

He says, ‘but to answer you, I’m doing well. Work’s been interesting lately.’

‘Oh?’

He’s so glad the one thing he has in common with his mother, the subject they can talk about at length, is murder.

‘If you were the Grey Gardens killer, where would you hide?’

Her face narrows in thought. She becomes pointed - pursed lips, her eyes flicked down towards her nose, brows furrowed. She drinks the herbaceous gin. ‘I suppose, I suppose so long as no one knew my name I could hide anywhere.’

‘Where do you think he’d hide?’

‘Oh I don’t know. Somewhere obvious.’

‘Why?’

‘Pardon?’

He apologizes then explains he has a friend he’s speculating with and the friend is all about _whys_ so if the killer was hiding somewhere obvious the question is _why_.

‘Well,’ Annette flutters again. Touches everything. It’s a ritualistic motion and she almost always touches the same objects. ‘He hid the bodies in an obvious place, didn’t he? Isn’t that the stereotype: dead body in the cellar?’

‘I suppose.’

‘Dead body in the garden. Dead body in the cellar. Dead body in the river.’ She shrugs. ‘Those are all the usual places you’d put one.’

‘Yes,’ he draws it out. Stops abruptly. Then, to cover to awkwardness, ‘so from that you’d assume he’d hide somewhere obvious?’

‘I think so.’ She shrugs again. ‘I’ve never given much thought to where they’d hide. Men like him.’

‘What? Never? Even when Raymond Foxe was running around murdering people, you never speculated about where he’d hide?’

She shakes her head, no no not at all. She just assumed he’d live as himself and the only trick to the situation was figuring out his name. He’s like a demon, or one of those wandering spirits that cleave on to you, the name is what will catch him.

And for Grey Gardens?

She thinks it’ll be something else. He wasn’t out to make a name for himself the way Foxe had been out to. So he’ll be hiding away, somewhere obvious but always the last place people look. Like the cellar. Like the back garden, under the tomatoes which have come out so lovely.

They finish their drinks in contemplative quiet.

As Downey takes his leave Annette presses his arm and asks, in her way, _are you well_ ? And he wants to laugh but they’re not at a place yet for that sort of thing. So he says, _I’m well._ And she says, _I’m glad._ And he knows she actually means it. Which is sweet of her, really, all things considered.

 

///

 

A writer once said that the landscape of where you grow up informs who you are, what you become, what you have and will be.

Cluttered cityscape of Ankh-Morpork is Downey’s defining landscape of childhood. Of his entire life. Buildings crooked, unkempt teeth against skyline. Rows of houses from different periods you can define them by their architecture: this one was built before the great fire of Ankh-Morpork, this one after, this one’s been redone the facade is new but the bones of the house old.

The streets are cobbled now, more or less, an alteration from the mud and dirt of his childhood and early adulthood. After a particularly torrential rain Ankh-Morpork streets would be a mire. Swampy mud, sticking to wheels as carts slogged through to and from markets. To and from the dockyards. To and from city gates.

The Ankh itself, that steamy, vapour ridden river, oozes through the blood of Ankh-Morkporkians as sure as it oozes through the city itself. The smell of the river is something like home. The familiar thrum of boats up and down, freight, water-cabs, personal barges, and pleasure craft. The deep sea ships are kept towards the rim-ward end of the city and cannot go too deep as the river is silting up. All the refuse of human life coming from the hub down to the bay stacks up at the mouth where floodplains and fens used to be but they’ve been drained to make way for Ankh-Morpork’s relentless growth. The city walls cannot contain them all. Neighbourhoods stumble outwards, into uncharted territory of what used to be farmland, common land, grazing land.

There are projects to clean up the river, to dredge and remove the sediment but they have yet to come to fruition. City politics slows them to a crawl. Too much arguing about the details, everyone convinced their way is the best and only way to proceed.

At its full size the city council is massive with representation from every guild, all the major neighbourhoods, all the powerful families, and now there are representatives from the newly formed burroughs outside the walls. It’s a clunking machine. Clumsy and dysfunctional it struggles to come to decisions. Vetinari, more egalitarian than previous patricians, does attempt to have some unified approach to massive projects that will impact large portions of the city.

That said, his magnanimity has its limits.

Downey suspects the river will be solved soon enough and in the manner Vetinari deems the best. Once the roads are solved. And the sewage. And the burial grounds. And the water supply. And on and on.

Ankh-Morpork is never ending. Contained in a mile by mile square, if you only include what is inside the walls, it is remarkably dense. Diving in you will never find which is up again. It’s like drowning. Only you’re sucking in humid, dank air as it happens.

Downey thinks in colours and maps the city in colours. The names of neighbourhoods, streets, the shape of memories and the colour of their shape.

The same writer that spoke of landscape also said that memory fades, memory adjusts, memory conforms to what we think we remember.

Downey remembers a fire that took a quarter of the city and turned it to cinders. He would have been five. Maybe six. Very young. But he recalls the skyline and since then in his head Ankh-Morpork has always been on fire.

Fire has different colours, and those colours will tell you what it can burn. The fire from his childhood burned so hot at its core it melted pottery. No bodies were found because they had turned to dust. His father had gone to help pull down houses to try and contain it and said the sound was something he would never forget. The growl of cracking beams, glass bursting, the vacuuming roar, screams of people, of houses falling, of horses and chickens and geese and dogs and cats and mice - anything trapped. He said you don’t hear noises like that in most lifetimes and he wished he had lived his without ever hearing it.

Downey had been eating lunch with him one summer day outside the Merchant’s Guild and he had felt so thankful his father said something of himself. He had been so thankful for that day he still has moments of excusing him, even, sometimes, standing on the brink of forgiveness.

His father had things that ate him alive. He had his own fire burning him up. He never learned how to put it out and for that Downey pities him.   


 

The neighbourhood of Grey Gardens, between the Tump and the racecourse, has the same feeling to it as it had thirty years ago. There’s an uncanniness to a space that does not change overmuch despite the city lurching forwards and back around it in the cyclical nature that is time, progress being a lie we tell ourselves and all.

He knocks on the door of the archivist’s grandmother.

A woman of perhaps eighty answers with pursed lips, expectant look, sterling black skin, hair kept neat beneath a bonnet. One of those old fashioned ones from well over ten years ago. Downey takes his hat off.

‘You granddaughter sent me,’ He says.

She looks him up and down, ‘I didn’t think she was that desperate for the inheritance.’

‘She didn’t send me like that, ma’am. We generally don’t announce ourselves when on a job. Ah, “wee Liza” said you would be able to help me with an inquiry.’

‘Did she? Well, that was rude of her. Speaking for me.’

‘It has to do with the recent discoveries.’

The woman smiles, full and wide. A smile so pretty it could change the weather. She steps back, says then by all means the gentleman may come in. She didn’t mean to keep him on the stoop in such a fashion.

Downey ducks his head and enters. The front rooms are tidy and painted a warm gold. The colour not unlike that of Mrs. Amarillo’s dress. Downey feels that he is beginning to understand why the commander is such an unfortunate and unpleasant fellow. Too many coincidences in this line of work can turn a person sour.

He gives her his card by way of introduction before taking off his coat and gloves. It is hung up in the hall and he is lead into the kitchen rather than the doily filled front parlour.

‘You may call me Mrs. Moore.’

‘A pleasure,’ Downey shakes her offered hand. ‘Lord Downey, at your service.’

‘You’re at the service of the one person I’m hoping not to see for a good while yet.’

‘You look very hale, if that’s any consolation.’

She smiles that pretty smile again, her wrinkles gathering up around eyes. She offers him a seat at her table then asks if he’d like a port. He says he would love a port.

Two small, crystal glasses are produced and set between them. She pops open a bottle of fine port from somewhere outside of Brindisi and pours them till they’re almost full. The bottle is set at the head of the table. She then sits herself, in a ladylike fashion, before taking up the glass.

‘To your health,’ she says.

‘And yours.’

‘Ariba,’ she raises the glass up, ‘abajo,’ she sets it down, ‘al centro’ she holds it to the centre and they clink glasses. ‘Y adentro.’ She knocks the drink back.

Downey decides he is in love.

‘So,’ She says, pouring herself a second glass. She motions for him to finish his first. He does. She pours him a second as well. ‘What do you wish to know?’

‘Thirty years ago, who was the caretaker of Grey Gardens.’ He asks, pulling out a notebook. In it he has the name of the woman whose address he initially wished to find though he doubts it will lead him far.

‘Oh dear, there were a few.’

Downey provides the year. Mrs. Moore sips her second glass in deep concentration. She moves her lips as she thinks before nodding. She holds her hand with three fingers up.

‘These are your possibilities,’ she says. ‘The first is Molly Jenkins, she’s dead though. The second is Fernie Larkin, she lives dockside near the shades.’

‘How the mighty have fallen,’ he mutters as he jots down her name.

Mrs. Moore purses her lips, unimpressed. ‘The third is Maggie Kiley.’

‘And where does she live?’

‘I’m not sure. She was there the longest but you know, I don’t know it’s her you’re after. Last I heard she was near the hubward gate. Dolly Sisters I want to say? But that’s old information.’

Downey writes it down. This is better, he has some ground beneath his feet now that there are names and addresses. Mrs. Moore repeats the year he lived there in a musing tone. She taps her chin then says with deep conviction, ‘it’s Larkin. I’m sure it’s Larkin. Small woman, freckles, an uncertain left eye and an easy laugh?’

‘Ah, um,’ he struggles to bring the woman to mind. There is a suggestion of brown hair always up in a severe manner. Something very matronly about her. ‘No freckles. I think she was a severe woman.’

‘A severe woman?’

‘I recall a severe hair style and a sort of gaol warden-esque nature to her.’

Mrs. Moore ponders this before shaking her head. She can’t recall anyone of that description, but maybe one of the women she’s provided will know. Another glass?

Downey agrees, if only to be polite. They cheers again and she teaches him the correct way to go about doing the motions. He pulls it off to her satisfaction, has an acceptable pronunciation, and leaves a good deal more pleased with himself than when he arrived.

  


///

  


What is a mere scrap of fabric? A shred of linen? A man can make a lot from a bit of fluff. A mere smidge of lint. Woad has changed in the last fifteen years. Until fifteen years ago dyers used tumeric and weld (dyer’s rocket) to make yellow. But the discovery of new plants from Agatea and the counterweight continent have broadened the colours.

There’s cinerea, butter-root, snakeweed and curled dock. Most important is the dye that comes from the inner bark of an oak tree that grows only on the counterweight continent. It’s richness quenches the desires of those who hunger after the sun and wish to wear it as much as bathe in its warmth.

But it’s new. The inner bark dye - or new to Ankh-Morpork which is the key point here.

  


///

  


There is a square of yellow planted in the centre of Downey’s desk.

It came folded neat in an envelope with no name.

  


///


	7. Chapter 7

Vetinari waits until Downey is done recanting his tales from the day. They involve student mischief, a strange old woman who lives by the racecourses, and a scrap of fabric.

Downey ends with that one, the scrap of fabric. The littlest thing. He pulls it from his sleeve and drops it on the backgammon board currently occupying the fireside table. Vetinari completes his turn before taking it up.

‘Wherever did you find this?’

‘It was a present left for me in the post box. Or that’s what Mericet assumes. It was folded up in an unaddressed envelope.’

Vetinari holds the piece up to candle light. There are feint threads of gold through it, so it is an expensive scrap of fabric. Canary yellow, it glints in the flames. Vetinari places it back in the middle of the board next to captured pawns.

‘So he knows,’ Vetinari says. He watches Downey’s pieces pounce down the board.

‘Yes. I have been discreet as one can be considering the circumstances. I’ve not had the subject broached by anyone.’

‘No,’ Vetinari hums. ‘He’s watching. He suspected something would happen.’

‘I mean, we did tell him we were assassins when we lived next door to him. He’s probably put two and two together. If he doesn’t know it’s _us_ he knows that there are two people trained in inhumation who may be going after him now that they’ve been reminded he’s a thing that exists.’

Vetinari rolls the die, a quick victorious smile at the snake eyes. ‘So sending you the scrap was a metaphorical stab in the dark?’ He watches for Downey’s snort, his smile. They come as expected.

‘Probably. Perhaps he thought if he sent it to the head of the Guild it would trickle down to the right person.’

‘If that’s the case it’s poorly planned, which isn’t like him. He’s a meticulous man, after all.’

Downey agrees. Vetinari asks if anything’s been updated. Downey says that perhaps no one should try and sneak into his offices, his bedroom, the hallways near him, or a good many of the classrooms. Vetinari takes the hint, he is happy to have Downey doing the physical work to visit. It’s less effort on his part and his leg objects to anything overtly strenuous.

Downey, being a sensible and sound assassin, has all sorts of traps set and they sometimes take great effort to go around. There is one in particular that Vetinari has yet to figure out how to evade soundlessly for every time he visits there are Harold and Alsace with tails in pointer fashion staring at the wall he emerges from. Their hackles lower when this realize who it is, but it’s always a bit unnerving to arrive to face two silent, well trained and apparently vicious dogs.

Dogs who Downey spends hours talking about and describing in great detail as “useless love bugs” and “dumb as door-nails” and “harmless lumps.” Vetinari is now convinced Harold has killed a man. That is a dog who has tasted human blood.

And that is Downey with his guard down.

‘The one way in by the bookcase is well done,’ Vetinari remarks. ‘Your dogs pick it up, somehow.’

‘That one is relatively new,’ special pleasure here. ‘I added it after a certain incident involving one of the more unfortunate members of our guild.’

‘Oh?’

‘Teatime. He’s dead now.’

‘Is that the one you took on because you felt bad due to his being an orphan?’

Downey scowls.

Vetinari continues, ‘then you realized you should have perhaps looked into the death of parents with more detail?’

‘It was a learning experience.’

Vetinari snorts. He says sometimes, when Downey tells him things, it sounds like Downey’s working them out for the first time himself. Which was absolutely the case with the Teatime Incident. Downey objects, this is absolutely not true.

Vetinari, in an attempt to be helpful, suggests, ‘you should talk through a situation as if you were giving a report.’

‘That only works in hindsight and anyway, Ms. Elka Mills turned out fine and she is an orphan of dubious origins as well.’

‘This is the Ms. Mills you sent to take care of that entire family in Agatea, correct?’

Downey rolls the die, double sixes. He gleefully cleans up part of the board. ‘She’s best for that sort of thing.’

‘I see.’

‘Doing one or two is difficult. But she doesn’t go out on her own, which is the important thing. And she is very good at keeping only to those intended to be inhumed provided they are more than two people. Don’t look at me like that.’

There are moments Vetinari wishes to keep in a box so he look back upon them later. This is one such moment. Downey terribly ecstatic about the game, charmingly defensive about his staff, handsomely smiling then, after he wins, handsomely leaning over the board kissing him. Claiming that it’s his prize for victory. It’s said in the same suave manner of when he claims this same act as a consolation prize for losing.

Vetinari doesn’t much care. Downey’s warm hands are cupping Vetinari’s face. There remains that boyish enthusiasm and energy Downey has always had and Vetinari assumes always will. Perhaps he ought not assume, he changes it to: he _hopes_ he always will. Given that Downey’s made it over fifty years with these traits the odds are in his favour.

They go from office through winding interiors of walls and dim corridors to Vetinari’s room. Downey’s all lush fabrics, Vetinari plain linen, cotton and heavy, faded brocade for the coming winter. Vetinari undresses himself as Downey does the same. Tonight they skip the tango of undressing each other in an even yet erotic pace in favour of speed, although this goes in direct contradiction to Downey’s romantic inclinations which rear their head every so often. Vetinari always says, _it’s efficient. I believe firmly in efficiencies._ Downey usually replies, _Yes but it does nothing for setting the mood._

Currently, the mood is Downey’s mouth against his with hand wrapped around Vetinari’s cock, Vetinari pushing him onto the bed, feet still on the floor, before turning him over and fingering him until he makes unseemly noises into his arm. The mood is fucking Downey roughly, telling him he can’t come until he’s told to. It’s saying, _you’re so tight, gods I was in you only days ago. Gods-gods-gods--_ It’s leaving bite marks on his shoulders. It’s fingers digging into hips, yanking Downey back onto him while thrusting forward. It’s Downey breathless and begging. It’s watching his cock moving in and out. It’s Downey’s back, muscles shifting, shoulders rolling. It’s the sound of skin on skin. It’s bed making small noises. It’s coming inside Downey but telling him he has to wait because Vetinari wants to watch him pull himself off. It’s Downey being pushed further on to the mattress, rolling over, stroking himself, hand on his balls, making desperate noises, coming over fingers, against stomach, between them.

  


The way affection worked for Vetinari in the past was in small things. He liked the brandy that’s in the lover’s mouth. He liked books, plays, songs if the lover does. Not that he liked those things individually, no, the lover must like them first then he’d find something in them to appreciate. Even if it was only the pleasure of the Other.

He thinks he’s beginning to sound like Madam. Categorizing the lover as Other, the subsequent delineation from there.

But, an example: Music performed on its own, distasteful. If it’s music the lover likes, he might learn to tolerate it.

In the past it was concertos, chamber music, strange Borogravian folk songs, and madrigals from six hundred years ago. Now it’s jazz and swing, piano filling up music halls and wine bars where they serve oysters shucked in front of you. It’s woodwinds and reeds. It’s loud, feet tapping stuff.

If Downey wants calm it means he wants silence. If he wants liveliness it’s swing or something you can salsa to. Which is very Downey. He’s buttoned down, refined coolness until he isn’t. The seemingly boundless, sometimes boyish, energy is controlled although it can escape from time to time. Through smiles, sighs, shifting movements in meetings, the inevitability of his acting and speaking before thinking.

  


‘You’re thinking,’ Downey murmurs. They’re detaching bodies. Vetinari desires a bath, Downey a smoke, apparently. Downey pulls on a bathrobe and hides against the window, propping it open with a bunched up scarf.

‘I tend to think a lot.’

‘I know.’ Said with warmth. ‘One of the many things I like about you. What are you thinking about?’

‘Music.’

Downey raises his eyebrows, blows out a stream of smoke.

Vetinari expands, ‘I dislike music being performed, as I believe you are aware.’

‘It has come to my attention.’

‘However, there have been times in the past when I’ve come to appreciate music that others have liked.’

Downey snorts, says Vetinari can just call them by their name. Or say _lover_ or _the person I was shagging at the time_ or heaven knows what else. This is why elaborate nicknames come in handy. You don’t want to say the name? Just call them something else.

Vetinari wonders if he should dissect the nickname comment considering the one he has been bestowed. He supposes the names one comes up with when one is eleven are different than the ones one comes up with at fifty.

Downey: ‘--anyway, that’s why I call him Dead Ferret in a Trench Coat’

Never mind.

Vetinari regains control of the conversation, ‘we will come back to the man who pretended to be dying in order to break up with you at a later time--’

‘He’s still alive but he quite literally runs away any time he sees me.’

‘Good lord.’

‘The only time we spoke after it all disastrously fell apart he said he had to tell me something very serious. Apparently, he was allergic to dogs and hated lacrosse and didn’t want to tell me this at the time which I can only assume is why he had to pretend to die for six months.’

‘Whatever did you say?’

‘Oh something like “that’s nice.” Then left.’ Downey snubs out the fag. ‘Anyway, music.’

Vetinari nods, yes, music. He explains again how he dislikes it save for when another does, then he can find something to appreciate. The current issue? ‘I don’t understand how you find jazz pleasant.’

‘The counter rhythms bother you?’ Downey’s grin is almost shit-eating. ‘Though considering your obnoxious clock--’

‘Terribly useful.’

‘Like a hole in the head.’

Vetinari smiles at him. Downey rolls his eyes.

‘No, no,’ Downey crosses back over to the bed and ensconces himself beneath covers. ‘It takes a while to get used to it if you’re not used to it.’

‘I believe madrigals are similar, rhythmically speaking.’

‘They are.’ Downey shrugs, ‘but otherwise beyond that they’re different. The effect is different, the texture of the music, what it conveys. But I think it’s sweet you tried to listen.’

‘Once.’

‘I could recommend some --’

‘I think I will live the rest of my life quite content without coming to a greater appreciation of jazz.’

Vetinari senses that Downey is set upon this. He suspects he will be hounded for the next few days but it will be an endearing sort of hounding. Like a cat bestowing upon you a half alive mouse in hopes of teaching you to hunt. Only more hygienic.

Downey whispers against his neck, ‘just don’t pretend to die for six months.’

‘I have informed you of my dislike of jazz and my disinterest in anything sporting related. Besides, that would be an unproductive use of my time.’  

‘I know, I’m merely clarifying. Anyway, I never expect any one person to have the exact same interests as me, you least of all.’

Vetinari shuffles around but Downey’s not letting go so he resigns himself to remaining in bed for a while longer yet. He rests with the thing inside of him that is becoming something like affection. It is a pleasant warmth, light and airy, sitting between diaphragm and lungs. He pushes thoughts of it away into a box in his mind. He will take them out at a later time to inspect.

 

///

  


Mrs. Kiley of the neighbourhood near Dolly Sisters has no information of use so Downey moves on to Fernie Larkin. Dockside, the Shades, a dangerous place to be no matter the hour of the day. Downey dresses in the black that says: I’m on business. I may stab you if you look at me wrong. Which, in the Shades, is the general attitude thrown around.

He proceeds to the address of Mrs. Fernie Larkin with little trouble. A fine autumn day, warm sun, a cool breeze, there is the blue of the sky to be seen, and so the denizens of this area of the city don’t seem inclined to make themselves a nuisance to Downey.

Fernie Larkin lives in a boarding house and is an old, leathery woman in her late eighties who squints when she speaks. Downey has no memory of her. He worries that the person who holds the answer to his inquiries is the dead Molly Jenkins and he’s not in the mood for seances or any other contacting-the-dead nonsense.

He worries if he were to do that unfortunate people may come through. Such as Cruces. Or his father. Or the former patrician.

‘I brought brandy,’ Downey says when Mrs. Larkin appears disinclined to open the conversation. He takes the seat offered to him. Her room is neat, if bare. There’s a trundle bed in the corner, a basin and water by a window covered with cheesecloth and burlap, the table they are currently at, and a small stove.

‘That’s good of you,’ she replies. She sits ramrod straight. ‘Your lordship.’ Added in an hurried after thought. She stands awkwardly and fetches two tea cups. They are clearly the finest she owns and with some pride she sets them down on the table between them. Downey pours them both a healthy serving.

‘Haven’t had a good brandy in years,’ Mrs. Larkin breaths it out with relish. ‘Oh, this is very fine. Your lordship.’

‘I’m glad you like it.’

‘You had questions you said?’

‘I’m following up on an old friend, but I think you weren’t there at the time. Grey Gardens, I lived there for a year or so.’

‘Did you?’ She is shocked. She peers at him as if sussing out whether or not a title changes a man. He could happily inform her that it’s not a title so much as money that makes a real difference in a person’s life. If you give off the essence of wealth it is a wonder what doors suddenly open to you. Mrs. Larkin says, ‘That was a miserable sack of a building. Not that this one is any better.’

‘Yes,’ he says in deep agreement. ‘When I was there the woman in charge was a severe sort of figure, very matronly.’

Mrs. Larkin shrugs, that could have been anyone. Downey isn’t sure what she means by that. ‘Oh well, sometimes I wasn’t available for a few weeks at a stretch due to other pressing matters and I’d hire out. Have someone fill in for me.’

‘This was a full year, ma’am.’

She shrugs again as if to say: yes, that too.

‘Brown hair,’ Downey explains. ‘A very severe face, chiseled, she could have been a gaol warden.’

She remains unresponsive.

Downey tries another angle, ‘Were you ever a, ah, colleague of Ms. Palm’s?’

Mrs. Larkin purses her lips and draws herself up in her washed out linens, her dreary knitted shawl, her off-colour bonnet. There is something to respect in that act and something equally to pity.

‘If you did, perhaps you mentioned the woman’s name to her?’ He clarifies. This does not cause her to relax. Her shoulders remain frigid. She should be a soldier for how straight she sits. ‘It’s rather important I find this woman, it’s the only reason I’m pressing the matter.’

‘What could it matter? Find your friend another way.’

‘Please.’

She stares down her nose at him before she crumples back into the small, squinting woman who let him in and in that act something familiar about her wiggles its way through to the surface. It was the set of her jaw, the straightness of her shoulders.

He sits back, pours himself a brandy. She seems to guess what has gone through his mind for she will not look at him. She balances her coolness with the expected behaviour one should display in front of a lord.  

‘You’re the one I’m looking for.’

‘I’m Mrs. Fernie Larkin.’

‘I doubt that. Why’d you take her name?’

Mrs. Larkin doesn’t wish to answer.

‘You worked there when I lived at the building,’ Downey prompts. ‘You were covering for the real Fernie Larkin.’

‘I am Fernie Larkin.’

‘Then you were covering for the Mrs. Larkin that a neighbour remembers. She described her as petit --’

‘Freckles, a flashy smile.’

Downey says that yes, that’s similar to the description he was given. So if you are Fernie Larkin who was she? He dreads to add on, I’m deeply confused.

‘Frannie Larkin,’ Mrs. Larkin says. ‘The mix up is easy enough. The neighbours never much talked to neither of us so of course they can’t get our names right.’

‘The neighbour didn’t remember you. But I take your point. So you’re sisters?’

‘Sure,’ she reaches for the brandy and pours them both another round.

‘Right. Good friends?’

‘Friends.’

‘I see.’

She says she doubts he does. She explains that Frannie had been a seamstress at the time, among other occupations, and so they’d take shifts at Grey Gardens doing the managing. She’d cover for when Frannie was off working and Frannie would cover when she found other employment and sometimes, during the good times, they’d both be there.

In a fit, Mrs. Larkin pulls out a miniature of Frannie kept tucked up her sleeve. She opens the case with great tenderness and shows him the image. It’s faded, but there is a woman wearing an impish expression. He says she’s rather a pretty young thing. Mrs. Larkin replies that she had been the prettiest thing on the Disc. She tucks it away, suddenly embarrassed.

‘When did she pass?’ Downey asks.

‘A few years ago. Five next Ember.’

‘My condolences.’

‘You know, I’m starting to think I know your face. You lived with a friend, didn’t you? A flatmate?’

‘Yes, an old school chum, though we didn’t much get on.’

‘Dire circumstances making strange flatmates?’

He nods, oh yes it was something like that. No, no the person he’s interested in lived next door to them. A strange fellow. Always wore a coat, even in the heat of summer. Smelled a bit off. Disappeared around the time Mrs. Amarillo did - the woman who lived across the hall.

This seems to jog memories for Mrs. Larkin so Downey presses on. He describes the coat, the shade of brown it was, the hat he always wore, the feeling the man gave off when you were near him, his lack of a sustained and regular schedule. Although in Grey Gardens that was hardly unusual.

Running out of things to describe he trails off. Mrs. Larkin taps the side of her cup. A thumb rubs the edge of it, over faded gold edging, pink flowers painted on the side.

‘Yes,’ she said after a long moment. ‘Oh yes, I remember him. He was a dyer, I think. It’s why he kept his hands in his pockets. They were always stained.’

It is with such desperation that Downey reigns himself back from pressing her. He fears she will forget if he dives in, he fears she will forget if he does not. He asks, in a calm manner, if she remembers the man’s name by any chance.

‘No,’ a deep sigh. ‘No I don’t. I only remember hers, the woman who disappeared. We all thought they ran off together.’

‘Isn’t that always the way?’

‘Yes,’ she’s wry. He thinks she should become friends with his mother so she has someone to talk to. ‘That is the way. I’m sorry I can’t be of more help. He’s a friend you say?’

‘Oh yes,’ he smiles cheerfully. ‘He just doesn’t know it yet. We’re going to become very well acquainted.’

She finishes the last of the brandy in her cup and sets it firmly down. ‘Good,’ she says. ‘I always knew I liked you when you were a tenant.’

  


///

  


Downey to Vetinari after the next morning’s city council meeting, ‘I’ve decided I am secretly a ninety-five year old woman at heart.’

Vetinari, deeply engrossed in the morning paper, replies, ‘I could have told you that.’

Downey places his hat on his head, it is a velvet black with a fine white feather, takes up his walking stick and mutters, softly, softly, ‘fuck you, Dog-botherer.’

The paper rustles. Downey is almost certain there was a _I heard that_ but he chooses to ignore it and jauntily decants from the room.

  


///

 

Vetinari takes out a paper written years ago after the Quayside Killer was tried and sentenced. _Raymond Foxe: Will and Power_ it opens, “We all expect monsters. We hear about serial murders, we find the crimes monstrous and incomprehensible, but we open the latest news rag and find them to be relatively normal folk; quiet people, mostly. They are people with families and jobs; people who fit in and go unnoticed.”

Raymond Foxe was a cop. A father. A grandfather. He was a member of the local bowls club and organized a scouts group for the children of the neighbourhood. He was a good husband, a kind and attentive family man, a jovial neighbour.

Yet he did such things.

Vetinari comes again to his insistence that such killers not be deemed monsters though their actions may be monstrous. The horror we feel when looking at what they have done is transferred on to the perpetrators. We feel that the crimes are monstrous, the crimes are then become monstrous, the person who did them a monster.

Slippage of definition. What signifies a monster?

He suspects Downey’s mother, from what he has heard of her, would call Raymond Foxe a monster for what he has done. Perhaps he wasn’t always. Perhaps not ever day was he a monster put he transformed himself through his actions often enough to bear that epitaph.

There are reasons Vetinari generally refuses to apply _monster_ to these men and they can all be summed up in two main points. Point the first: Foxe would want to be called a monster and Vetinari does not wish to gratify the man even in death. Point the second: It Others Foxe but in a way where society can wash its hands of him while still reveling in what he has done.

How many books have come out about him? How many penny dreadfuls? True Lifes? Plays based on the events? Ankh-Morpork consumes Foxe’s murders with as much vivaciousness as Foxe committed them. They consume the falsified ideal of a serial killer with the same glee as they consume his victims. 

The Grey Gardens killer will be much the same as Foxe. Plain. Pedestrian. Terribly sane. All in all a disappointment.

A part of Vetinari hopes the killer knows that he is a disappointment. That he is, at the end of the day, _boring._ That he is pitiable and above all else he is banal.

  
///


	8. Chapter 8

Downey is in front of a group of fifteen seventeen year old boys all of whom are staring at him with great expectation.  

‘Sir?’ One of them prompts. 

‘I’m sorry, please repeat the question. Busy morning, my mind’s elsewhere.’ 

‘Why’s it not safe to dye you know,’ the lad in question glances to his friends and they all snicker, ‘that uh  _ device  _ used for uh, not getting a girl pregnant.’ 

‘A condom?’ Downey prompts. 

The boys snicker again but nod. They want to know why it’s bad to draw funny faces on them. Because of course they do. 

‘Dyes and ink can be harsh on the materials that make it up. Depending on what you’re using, it could be intestine, oiled silk paper, linen, bladder, or very fine leather. Regardless, it can cause degradation which increases the risk of pregnancy and disease transmission. So no painting funny faces on them.’ 

One of the young men shoots his hand up. He says he’s seen some that have girls painted on them. Or perhaps printed? He didn’t get a good look before the shopkeeper shuffled them away. But he saw girls.  _ Girls in only their garters and stockings.  _ And a few others, but they were weird. He thinks they’re what one would call  _ kinky. _ If you like dead girls. 

‘I would be cautious about those,’ Downey says. ‘They could be damaged in the process of, ah,  _ decorating _ .’ 

Another boy asks, ‘I know a guy who is a dyer and he says he’s used them all in different colours because it amuses his wife and he’s never had an issue. They only have three children.’ 

‘It’s not a hard and fast rule, but I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t educate you about the reality of the situation which is that any tampering with condoms that’s not for the purpose of putting one on - so dying, painting them, adding scents. Don’t do that, by the way. For your lady’s sake. And so on - all of that can run the risk of increasing chances of transmission of bodily fluids. Condoms are already imperfect, there’s no need to set the odds against you to a greater degree.’ 

The first boy shrugs, he declares he’s still intent on getting one with the girl on it. If only to look at. Downey wonders what has happened to the smutty Quirmian postcards of his day if the young men are this desperate. 

Another laughs, ‘just go to Larry, he’s got stuff--’ he stops. Colours. Ducks his head and refuses to make eye contact with Downey. 

‘Right, we’re almost out of time. Any questions?’ 

Five hands go up. 

‘Mr. Barnes, since you’ve been quiet all class.’ 

‘So let’s say you’re with a girl,’ he starts off. All the boys in the class twist around to look at him with avid attention. ‘Hypothetically speaking. And uh it uh comes off. And one thing leads to another and basically, I mean, how would she know if uh she got uh pregnant? You know?’ 

Downey is thinking  _ oh dear gods.  _ Out loud says mildly, ‘well if she misses her monthly courses that’s usually the first sign, although it’s not definitive. If she’s missed them for several months, plus changing size in hips and waist, and so on, are indicators. Some women experience morning sickness early on.’ 

‘So, hypothetically speaking, if that situation happened but you know her uh,  _ that _ happens after, she’s all right?’ 

‘Generally speaking. In this hypothetical situation.’ 

‘All right, all right. Good, good.’ 

Downey dismisses the class but holds Barnes back. 

‘Has she told you everything’s in the clear?’ 

Barnes shrugs, staring at the desk. The inkwell, the books stacked, the collection of exams from the period before. 

‘Have you asked her?’ Downey prompts. 

At last a mumbled  _ no, sir _ . 

‘You should.’ 

‘Yes, sir.’ 

‘It’s the gentlemanly thing to do and you are a gentleman are you not?’ 

‘Yes, sir.’ Ah the sweet tone of a petulant teenager.

‘Go on then, Mr. Barnes, you have class to get to.’ 

The boy shoulders his bag, hunched over with cheeks scarlet, he hurries from the room. 

It is only right and fitting that the son of the chair of the Committee of Won’t Someone Think Of The Children Morality Brigade would be the one with a girl possibly in trouble. Downey puts a pin in that thought, it is something to be solved at a later date. 

 

///

  
  


Dead girls painted on condoms. Who does that? More to the point,  _ who buys them and uses them?  _ Downey cannot imagine a situation where that would be titillating. Then again, he supposes it depends on what they look like. How they’re rendered. All those murder mystery and crime books about dead girls have them described beautifully. Sexually. People clearly get off on it to some extent. Or, at the very least, they like the aesthetic. 

Which tells Downey they know nothing of what happens to the body in death. How decomposition begins straight away. How the pleasant, peaceful look of the dead lying in state is a falsified image. Their jaws are wired shut, their eyelids pushed down into small pins to hold them in place, the skin heavily makeup-ed, their bodies filled with embalming fluid and whatever is around to stuff into the carcas to keep it proportionate. There are many fluids in death. The body seeps. Humans being rather liquidy, death causes oozing, discharges, dribbling and dripping. 

Not what one wants to think about while in bed. 

Or maybe it is. Downey has  _ opinions  _ on this.

 

Knowing only one shop that sells decorated devices in the manner the boys in class were speaking of, Downey takes a discreet, circuitous route to the shop and knocks at the back door. A small man with thick glasses peaks out from a curtained window in the door then unlocks. 

‘Come in,’ he hurriedly ushers Downey in then closes and locks the door. 

The back room is well lit and lined with shelves and drawers, each marked with letters or numbers, depending on the applicable filing system. 

‘Well,’ the man, Gregson, straights his glasses. ‘What can I do for your lordship?’ 

‘I heard you may either have, or know who would have, decorated condoms. The sort with paintings on them.’ 

Gregson nods, oh yes. They’re popular. He has a selection that just came in. He goes to a drawer and pulls out a box. At the large table which dominates the centre of the dimly lit room he opens it up and takes out a selection. 

‘Is this what you’re after, sir?’ 

Gregson lays out four options and they match what the student described. Scantily clad women in different positions. He nods, yes this is what he’s after only perhaps a bit racier. Gregson pulls out another four then another. None are dead. 

Gregson gathers up the selection he’s laid out and carefully files them away. With a finger up,  _ wait a moment _ , he returns the box to its drawer and takes out another. This one he says may be what his lordship is after. 

‘They’re not for everyone, but they’re certainly more risque if that’s what you’re keen on.’ He takes a moment to consider the options then places four on the table. 

Downey smiles, slow, reptilian. This is what he was after. ‘Who is the artist?’ He asks, picking one up to inspect. ‘Is it the same one as the others?’ 

‘No, there are a few who provide these. The four here are provided by a Mr. Jones, obviously not his real name but this isn’t an industry where you ask many questions. A fact I’m sure you appreciate.’ 

Downey agrees. He takes up a second one. The girls are dead and laid out with their dresses hitched up making it clear what has happened either before or after her death. He asks if there are others. Gregson supplies another five, saying that this is all he has of these particular kind. The last one catches Downey’s eye. Unlike the others, the woman isn’t posed in a sexual manner. Instead, she’s lain out almost lovingly. Her body wrapped in a thin shawl that reveals breasts, nipples, hips, and ends around the pelvis leaving her lower half bare. 

The shawl is yellow. 

‘Who did this one? It’s different to the rest.’ 

‘Ah, let me see.’ Gregson takes the condom and looks at the back of the package then cross references with a ledger. ‘Um, a Mr. R. Foxe.’ 

‘I’m sorry, Foxe with an ‘e’?’ 

‘Yes, your lordship.’

‘Do you remember him?’ 

Gregson’s face, once open and helpful, closes. He shuts the ledger and puts it away in a drawer then locks it. He says that he doesn’t like when people pry too much about either his artists  _ or  _ his customers. 

‘I appreciate that,’ Downey reaches into a coat pocket and takes out his purse. Gregson cocks an eyebrow as Downey places a selection of rather high value bills on the table. ‘Unless you prefer hard money, in which case-’ coins are stacked neatly next to the bills. ‘What did he look like?’ 

‘Hard to say, he always wears a broad brimmed hat and coat.’ 

‘How old would you say he is?’ 

‘Also hard to say, your lordship. Maybe sixty? Give or take five years.’ 

‘When he gave you his name, how did he seem?’ 

Gregson thinks on this for a moment, his eyes lingering on the coinage. While thinking he gathers up the merchandise from the table and tucks it away, save for the woman in the shawl. 

‘Thoughtful,’ he says finally. ‘I would call him thoughtful. I asked for his name and he sort of looked away and said very slowly Raymond Foxe.’ 

‘Do you know who Raymond Foxe is?’ 

Gregson’s lips twitch. Oh yes, he knows who Raymond Foxe is - or was, rather. But wouldn’t that be appropriate? The  _ nom de plume _ , so to speak, of the man who paints dead women in sheets to be Raymond Foxe, the man famed for leaving women dead in their beds. 

Downey looks down at the woman in the yellow sheet, almost that of a shroud. Her expression is peaceful. He takes it up, how much? He takes out the amount and hands it over along with a little extra.

‘One last thing,’ Downey asks as he waits for Gregson to unlock the door. ‘Do you know what it is he does for a living? Other than this line of work.’ 

‘Um, he’s in trade. I don’t remember which. Tanners, maybe? I can’t remember.’ 

Downey touches his hat and ducks out of the shop.    
  


///

 

Here is a scene: the commander of the city watch sitting in a city council meeting with a sour expression. This is normalcy. Vetinari is long familiar with the many and varied expression of displeasure that Vimes has in stock. 

This one is currently aimed at the younger Rust who is filling in for his father as Lord Rust is unable to attend due to health. 

‘All I’m saying is perhaps you could use some help,’ Rust repeats. ‘There is a madman out there murdering people and burying their bodies in a basement and you haven’t caught him. Bringing in some men from Pseudopolis, or wherever, is a sound idea.’ 

Vimes repeats himself as well - it’s a cold case, he’s not active, it’s been thirty years, more to the point:  _ this is his jurisdiction, damnit. _

‘And,’ Vimes mutters. ‘You’re sitting next to a murderer if you’re so concerned about this sort of thing.’ 

Downey, in the midst of drinking his coffee, glares.  

Rust, blithely, ‘Inhumation isn’t murder, your grace. But I don’t expect a man of your class to understand the distinction.’ 

The argument devolves at a rapid pace into another battle in the ever ongoing Class War. Well rehearsed, it makes its appearance with great regularity in city council meetings. 

Vetinari watches the lively exchange of views, finding the repetitiveness of the scene soothing. 

While he appreciates silence when he works, there is something to be said for background noise. He reflects that this may be a result of growing up with Madam. As a boy he would hide away on the backstairs of whichever music academy they were visiting at the time and read. The muted din from the front rooms a constant element of childhood nights. A splash of music here, the sound of champagne glasses breaking, peels of laughter, the hum of voices. It was a backdrop for thought. 

Not to mention all the tidbits of lives you picked up if you decided to pay attention. 

Currently, Vimes is saying something about  _ inherited wealth _ and  _ the backs of the poor  _ and Rust is going on about  _ hard earned money _ and  _ isn’t your son going to inherit everything?  _ Also in the din Boggis, Ms. Palm and Slant argue quietly over an agreement that’s gone foul. The head of the Merchant’s Guild, Mr. Thurrough, keeps trying to talk to the head of the Glaziers’ but is being ignored. The head of the Guild of Teachers is discreetly grading papers. Selachii and Venturi are discussing the weather with great perseverance. Occasionally, Venturi casts disparaging looks to Mr. Harrow of the Ankh-Morpork Bank seated next to Moist Von Lipwig who is picking at his nails, bored. 

What a beautiful thing is early morning council meetings. Nothing quite gets the blood pumping like filling a room with people who can barely tolerate one another. 

Vetinari enjoys rearranging the seating and watching how things unfold. He considers it a light social experiment. As is the altering available refreshments. Thus far, only Ms. Palm and Downey have begun supplying their own coffee and breakfast foods. Although Downey has spent the last six years complaining about the coffee quality at council meetings. In return, Vetinari has spent the last six years asking him if there is some part of the word “tyrant” he doesn’t understand to which Downey replies  _ I understand perfectly, your lordship, but I trust as tyrant you still have a sense of taste. _

It had been the first data point Vetinari made about Downey as a civic leader: he will complain _ ad nausea _ about the quality of victuals you provide regardless of whether or not you tell him that the scorpion pit is  _ that way  _ if he’d like to leave a suggestion for improvement. 

The second data point had been Downey’s tendency to say “someone should do something about that” while taking absolutely zero interest or responsibility in fixing whatever it is that is at fault. 

Although Vetinari has discovered that this translates into private life as well except it’s Downey saying, “could someone please do x” while not making any indication that he could possibly do whatever it is he wants done. Instead he will say  _ could someone please close the window _ or  _ I wish someone would close the window please  _ then look up from his book to Vetinari then back down. Vetinari is still deciding if he should bother trying to teach Downey to say “could you/insert-name please do x” which would be an improvement if only because the language would be more honest. 

In the present, the commander has crossed his arms. Vetinari watches with interest as Rust ignores Vimes’ body language and barrels forward in whatever leg of the argument they’re on at this point. Next to Rust, Downey, bored, reads the morning paper. Lipwig has injected himself into Boggis, Slant and Ms. Palm’s argument. Selachii and Venturi aren’t talking. Mr. Harrow, uncomfortable with the anger directed at him by Venturi, busily tries to talk to the head of Glazier’s guild who ignores him. 

It’s time. 

‘As fascinating as all of this is,’ Vetinari says in a low voice. Vimes mouth clamps shut and Rust leans back in his seat with a sour expression. Downey slowly lowers the paper, Boggis finishes saying _ and that’s why you have to shank them-- _ before realizing the room is mostly silent. Lipwig snorts indelicately at Boggis’ too loud comment. The head of the Merchant’s Guild gives Lipwig a disapproving look. Mr. Harrow sinks low into his seat. Venturi is still glaring at him. 

‘It is best we return to the item at hand.’ Vetinari makes a point of reading the agenda. ‘We were at subsection two of subsection b of item four which was introduced on the behalf of Lord Rust by his son. I believe we can safely say that the matter of the Grey Gardens killer is in hand and the Ankh-Morpork Watch will do their best to capture the person, or persons, involved. Shall we move on to item five, part a, subsection 1.A?’ 

No one is enthused but no one objects. 

Vetinari, cheerfully, ‘excellent. So, winter preparation. As you all know, the almanac is predicting a colder winter than usual with expectations that it will be as severe as the one four years ago.’ 

‘Gods, that winter was terrible,’ Ms. Palm says. ‘None of my girls could work outside.’ 

‘Indeed,’ Vetinari folds his hands. ‘It was also the winter with the highest death toll due to weather related concerns. To address this issue I am meeting with the Confraternity for the Relief of the Poor and Homeless in the hopes of finding a solution. Now, it has occured to me that if we had a dedicated facility where the more unfortunate of our city could take refuge it would reduce the impact of the cold on yearly death tolls.’ 

The city council members glance with great uncertainty at one another. Vetinari continues to smile in his usual manner which seems to unsettle people.

‘So,’ Lipwig ventures slowly. ‘You’re in need of a building?’ 

‘Quite right. Or a plot of land on which to build the appropriate edifice.’ 

Cautious glances exchanged. Several members of the council are looking resolutely elsewhere. 

‘As it’s a charitable cause, I know you all would be eager to help.’ 

Everyone, except Vimes, mutters to themselves.

Vetinari continues, ‘if, for example, your guild received a gift of a parcel of land, perhaps as part of a bequest, it would be very generous to gift it to the city for such a cause as this.  _ Someone _ should think about doing that.’ 

No one speaks. 

Vetinari picks up a piece of paper and reads it in the silence. The sort of silence that has texture. At length Vetinari says, ‘I see here that the following Guilds may be in a position to help which would be much appreciated and won’t be forgotten--’

‘And it would have a tax benefit,’ Slant mutters.

‘We’ve got something,’ Downey chimes suddenly. 

Vetinari glances at Slant who shrugs. 

‘How kind,’ Vetinari dry as kindling. Vimes snorts. Downey smiles. It could be called predatory, but that would be mean. Vetinari settles for  _ less than altruistic.  _ Almost a pantomime, this scene as it plays out, grates. Vetinari wishes they weren’t all behaving like caricatures of themselves. He addresses the agenda, ‘We’ll discuss details after. Now onto item five, part a, subsection 1.B.’ 

Everyone groans. 

  
  


///

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those interested in early modern decorated condoms here are a few choice selections:   
> https://i.pinimg.com/originals/bf/88/f9/bf88f98f66bde4bbca270bc29086a636.jpg  
> https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CMjPzCmWwAEAdnV.jpg:large  
> http://www.smile-condoms.com/images/histoire/compresse/capote3.jpg


	9. Chapter 9

When the author of the  _ Collected Autobiographies _ fell into the box containing the speaking reliquary it caused him to become obsessed with meaning. The reliquary was designed as an arm and supposedly contained the right radius and ulna of some sainted person in the local religion of the region. The details are unimportant. 

What is important is the purpose of the reliquary. What does a reliquary say? When they speak it is not simple statement of fact - it is not  _ I contain the ulna of some sainted person.  _ It’s more complex than that. The reliquary speaks in metaphor, it speaks in slippages of meaning, it speaks through the fragmentation of the body. 

When Vetinari was a young boy, no more than eight, he was given a fine cloak to wear out. Madam had it made for him out of a deep blue. The colour was so dark it sometimes lied and showed itself as black. The material was crushed velvet trimmed in gold with a clasp of white-gold and ivory. He remembers loving the cloak, the weight of it, the way it lay along his shoulders and collar bone. 

Collarbones, they rest near arteries which carry blood to the heart, to lungs, to mind that creates thought and allows one to speak. All these individual things, and more, make up the small portion of the human that speaks. 

If he had a reliquary made to speak to all the fragments of his body and it was in the shape of the cloak and contained a collar bone then that reliquary (coat, bone) would represent speech regardless of the distance a coat and a collar bone has from the act of speaking. 

The author writes,  _ the representation of a body speaks as much about the way we are to read the person as it is about the body itself. In anatomy books, it is the bodies of dead criminals we see displayed before us but they are posed in valiant stances. Some knightly, others saintly, still others kingly. How do you read that image? What is the meaning of showing the criminal body as saintly?  _

Vetinari sees reliquaries as a reflection of self, a reflection of other. They speak to an attempt to understand and preserve meaning of a life, of a body and how sacredness is infused within the physical as well as metaphysical. The life of a sacred person, a heroic individual, a king, a prince, is written as much in their physical remains as it is in their biographies. And physical remains, in death, speak to a shrinking, a dismemberment, a fracturing of the former whole. 

Death dismembers resulting in fragments that represent a collection that makes up one person. A collected autobiography. Gently amused by this, he underlines the passage about criminal and saintly bodies and writes a note about preserving meaning of a life. Or, he thinks, in this case bestowing a new meaning onto a life. 

The thought of the cloak makes him think of Madam and he wonders how she is doing. In Pseudopolis, she hasn’t been able to travel with the same regularity and vigour of when she was younger which has made her irritable. 

He supposes he should write her. 

 

Paper procured, he makes quick work of opening paragraph  _ hope you’re well  _ and  _ weather is turning here, I assume it’s quite autumnal where you are  _ and  _ Mr. Fusspot continues in good health, thank you for asking in your previous letter dated the second of this month _ .  _ I understand Steven had an ear condition but it looked to be on the mend. If there are any veterinary services that are available in AM that you need please do let me know and I will ensure they are made available for your cat.  _

He ponders how to continue. He wonders about all these people around him who give human names to their animals. Well, he thinks, it’s just Madam and Downey. Still. Two is a significant amount. 

For inspiration on what to write next he takes out her previous letter. He adds some lines about her business in the city but doesn’t dwell on it, assuming she gets her information on it from a source closer to the enterprise. 

_ I found a collection of your old letters to my father and revisited them about a year and a half ago.  _

He isn’t sure where he’s going with this so simply offers to return them should she want them. He pivots the letter to business and spends the remainder of it on city politics. 

He ignores the last paragraph of her latest letter _ I’m thinking I ought to visit you, when I get my strength up. It’s been too long and I worry I’m missing things. Write me when it would be most convenient for me to come. I’d prefer a warm month, so please keep your convenience to spring and summer.  _

The letter is folded, sealed, and given to Drumknott to send. 

He thinks it will never be a convenient time for her to come because it will never be a convenient time for him to be seen. He doesn’t wish to be read by her for she would look at him and make meaning from his behaviour, piece it all together and then she would ask a question or two which he would then not answer but they’d sit there in his head, nesting, procreating, making more questions he’d have to answer, at least to himself, and he doesn’t have time for that sort of thing. 

Downey said the other day, ‘it’s strange to speak with my mother. It’s been thirty years, you know. And here we are, trying to have tea. It’s all a bit much.’  

Vetinari sighs. He takes out paper, writes a follow up,  _ You are always welcome. You know my schedule and so know that no time and any time would be convenient. Come when you’re able. The city remains it’s usual filthy self but I’m sure you’ll find something of it to enjoy. You always do.  _

  
  


///

  
  


Downey tramps into his public office and finds an envelope on his desk. Again nameless but assumed to belong to him. He leaves gloves on, picks it up, and goes to find Mericet. 

‘Second one in as many days,’ Downey says dropping it on the table in Mericet’s office. The elderly gentleman raises an eyebrow in his delicately expressive way. ‘I want to know how they’re being delivered and by whom.’ 

‘May I ask what’s in them?’ 

‘First one was a scrap of fabric. It’s to do with a job I’ve taken on. Make inquiries for me.’ 

Mericet agrees then reaches forward and with his pen knife opens the letter. Out comes a piece of wallpaper. Silk wallpaper. An off pink and stained. Mericet prods it with his knife then looks to Downey for an explanation. 

‘Part of a job,’ Downey repeats. He takes up the piece of wallpaper. It’s an exact match to their old apartment. Not only had it decorated their rooms but also the hall, the wash closet, the main landing. Anyone who lived in Grey Gardens would know this pink. 

‘Whatever’s going on, they’re onto you.’ Mericet says. ‘Or onto the Guild in general, since they haven’t put your name.’ 

‘I don’t think they know it’s me, but I do think they know they’re being sought.’ 

‘Very well, the Guild will take the usual precautions.’ 

Downey leaves, fingering the silk wallpaper. The pink is a special kind of dye that could be used in printing for the pattern is clearly pressed into handwoven fabric by a form of block printing. 

In his private office he places the wallpaper with the dress fabric and condom then pours himself a brandy. This is when he needs Vetinari. This sort of cryptic crossword approach to clues and thought patterns. Why would the killer choose to use Foxe as a pseudonym? Why would he send Downey these things? Why would he taunt his own, future killer? It seems a mad thing to do and Downey doubts the man he is after is mad in that brash, over-the-top kind of way.

Right, he thinks, I need to lay out the options. I can go to the dye-works and see if I recognize the man, but that would put him onto me and I doubt I’d know him to see him. He’s in his sixties, an artist of perverse drawings, a dye-worker, perhaps in the Guild hierarchy. 

He either knows, or guesses, that he is being hunted which means he’s heard a rumour or seen Downey poking around the old neighbourhoods. Doesn’t matter how he knows, only that he does and now he’s what? Playing a game? Downey dislikes this sort of runaround. It’s too arbitrary. There are no rules which means he can’t predict the ways in which they may be broken. 

He decides that he needs to see the dresses. He wants to have everything firmly in place before he goes to spy on his man. He pours himself a second drink. 

From their settled place by the hearth Harold and Alsace raise their heads, emit a low rumbling growl. Downey disappears into shadows.

The room becomes still. Slanted light comes in from the large windows catching dust particles. Harold stands and goes over to a part of the wall and waits, poised with body tense. Alsace joins him, hackles raised. 

A soft hiss then a mechanical click. Silence. Downey, weapon in hand, goes to the wall panel by the fireplace, touches one side of it and it gently opens. Taking a candle he ducks in to see the damage but finds no body, only the lingering hint of a smell. It’s familiar, calling up memories of that first summer in Grey Gardens. Downey stares into the darkness of the passage between walls, resets the device, and returns to his office. 

On the blade that had jutted out of the wall towards the intruder there was a small amount of blood. Downey lets Alsace and Harold smell the handkerchief he used to wipe it off. The lazy part of him hopes the man be fool enough to try again, if only because Harold will take care of it for him. But the part that wishes for closure wants to do it himself. If only for the satisfaction of asking a few questions before killing the man.  

  
  


///

  
  


Raymond Foxe’s madness was in his breaking the pact all people sign unofficially when they are born into a civil society. Foxe was methodical. He was patient, until he wasn’t anymore. He knew when to stop. He was brash, hiding in plain sight, doing all those vile things while working for the Watch. Bold. Loud. Dick-swinging. 

Although, based on the accounts of the few survivors, apparently his dick was rather small. 

Not that that has anything to do with the matter. Dick size is irrelevant to most things. 

Downey calls on Angua the next morning, finding her at the greasy spoon she frequents before her morning shift. He brings the fabric, the wallpaper, the condom and buys her a refill of coffee. 

She picks up the condom, inspects it then says, ‘not really my thing.’ The man behind the counter looks at them both ascance. 

‘Apparently it’s the killer’s _ thing. _ I’m fairly sure he’s the one who painted it.’ 

‘However did you find that out?’ 

‘Sex education with sixth form.’ 

She stares at him. Drops the condom back down. This gets another look from the man behind the counter. She waves at him, ‘it’s fine Joe, it’s part of a case.’ 

‘I see,’ Joe replies in the tone of one who is deeply dubious.

‘He’s very protective,’ she says to Downey. ‘He makes sure the old men in here leave me alone.’ 

‘How kind of him. I want to see the dresses.’ 

Joe gives him a dark look. 

‘The commander--’

‘Will go postal, I’m aware. Sneak me in for ten minutes.’ 

‘No.’ 

‘Eight.’ 

‘No.’ 

‘Seven, and that’s as low as I’ll go. It’s a good deal.’ 

She stares at him in confusion. Downey picks up the condom and tucks it away. He says seven minutes will be more than enough time. This earns a horrified look from Joe. Angua turns to the other man, ‘it’s not how it sounds.’ 

‘I should hope not,’ Joe mutters. ‘Your captain Carrot would have his guts for garters.’ 

‘I don’t wear guts as garters,’ Downey says primly. ‘It’s terribly unhygienic.’ 

Joe, ‘that’s not who I meant.’ 

Angua grabs her helmet, throws some money on the counter, and snaps that they’re going now. Downey follows her lead and as he puts his hat on chimes, ‘I’m a better lover than that. Give me credit for going more than seven minutes.’ 

Angua, horrified, ‘I never want to think about that. We are going. Now.’ 

Downey winks at Joe who is torn between becoming enraged and needing to verbally deny whatever it was Downey implied with the wink. Downey leaves him and follows Angua out of the dive to bright morning skies. 

  
  
  


The evidence rooms look the same as when Downey broke in a year ago. The bones are kept in the cool room in numbered boxes. Only one has a name, Mrs. Amarillo. The others are numbered one to sixteen. Beside Amarillo’s name is seventeen in brackets. 

Angua stands by the door and hisses that he better hurry. She thinks they have maybe a ten minute window, at most. Downey ignores her as he gently takes out the evidence bags with the frocks. 

With gloved hands he inspects each of the dresses. There are four yellow dresses, not counting Mrs. Amarillo’s, as well as the yellows shawls. Of the two remaining dresses one is pink, the other blue. Downey sets the non-yellow ones aside and compares the remaining. Three are the same fabric. He thinks it’s dyed with turmeric. The third is with weld. The colours have faded differently, wear time differently, and even when they were in their prime they would have been different shades. The three that are the same have fine stitching with a particular cross stitch that would be unique to a specific tailor. The fourth is of the best quality. There is lace along the sleeves and the cut is something a woman of fashion would wear. 

But, it could have come down second, third and fourth handed to a seamstress. 

Or the killer could have acquired it in some way or another. 

Quickly taking out a notebook he sketches the stitching and jots down his thoughts on the fabric. The dresses and bones are returned. He’s through the window and out onto streets with none the wiser. 

  
  
  


Annette is in the kitchen when Downey comes into the house through the backyard. 

‘We have a front door, Will.’ 

‘Indeed. Thought I’d take a new way around.’ 

His coat is folded on the table bench with hat perched atop. The notebook he takes out and places to the side. His mother sits, doing the sprouts. It’s an old memory and a new one, seeing her like this. Gently taking the knife and the vegetables he says he’ll do it. Like when he was child and avoiding -- 

She says she’ll put the kettle on. 

‘Have you seen this stitch work before?’ He asks. The notebook is pushed over with an elbow as his hands are wet and busy with the sprouts. 

Annette looks at the sketch and shakes her head. Nothing that looks familiar to her, although it is distinctive. Why, where had he seen it? Oh no where particular. He’s only asking for a friend. 

She goes to the stove, opens it and prods the fire with a stick before adding a log. Wiping her hands on her apron she takes out the teapot, two tea cups, a spot of sugar and cream. She has no lemon so cannot offer that. Downey says sugar and cream are swell. 

The cups are laid out between them. Downey sets the sprouts aside to stir tea. Annette looks at him in the way he has come to understand as apologetic. It’s at once searching and weepy. 

‘Will, I want to apologize,’ she says. 

The sentence isn’t one Downey ever expected to hear. He isn’t sure he wants to. It sits, limp, on the table.

‘For what?’ He performs smiling warmth. He wants to run out the back door, through the yard and the neighbour’s chicken coop. 

‘I wanted to -- I wasn’t a good mother,’ she says. In turns she looks at his face then at the table. ‘I should have said something when your father -- when you and Amos had your disagreement.’ 

He thinks, Well at least we’ve both been using the same euphemism. 

‘But at the time I didn’t understand and later when he explained why -- I thought you’d come back one day. Once you got your head figured out.’ 

‘Right.’ 

‘But then you didn’t.’ 

‘No, I didn’t.’ 

‘Then you were made a lord.’ 

‘There are a lot of years skipped over, but sure, then I was made a lord.’ 

She clutches her tea cup. Her hands are so frail Downey thinks they might break. He looks at them, the callouses on her fingers, the thin wedding band, the veins. She’s the colour of fine china save for liver spots. Her nails are short, one chipped. Probably from doing housework in order to keep the home to the standard Amos would have expected. 

‘You’re a teacher, now,’ she says. 

‘I’ve been a teacher most of my life. Since I was three and twenty.’ 

Oh, right. Right, of course. That makes sense, he’d have to have done something. She isn’t sure what she thought he had done. Assassin things, she supposes. Whatever those are. 

‘Murder for lots of money, mostly.’ 

‘Well that’s good,’ she tries. ‘Then you were made a lord.’ 

‘Yes, mom, then I was made a lord.’ 

She tentatively asks what it was he did to deserve the lordship. She hadn’t heard, is all. But she had saved the announcement. Secretly. Kept it folded and tucked at the bottom of her sewing kit. He says it was for services rendered to the city during the last transition of patricians. 

‘I see,’ she says but clearly doesn’t. Downey drinks his tea instead of elaborating. ‘And you never married?’ 

‘No,’ dry. ‘I never did get my head figured out.’ 

‘I see.’ This one she does see. ‘So you’re on your own?’ 

He blinks. Why would one follow the other? But unable to answer just shrugs. 

She quickly asks, ‘you have your friend? The one you mentioned.’ 

‘Yes.’ 

‘And they’re uh,  _ he’s  _ uh--’ 

‘A friend.’ 

‘Good,’ she licks her lips. ‘Good. I have something for you.’ 

‘I don’t need another quilt.’ 

She smiles and Downey’s pleased to see it. She moves slowly from the kitchen down the hallway to the old counting room. The space that will only ever be his father’s. He assumes it still smells like his father, that particular blend of tobacco, leather, lamp oil and black tea. Amos’ hands were fragrant with incense of foreign spices brought into the city to flavour the tables of the rich. His skin had known the touch of soft fox fur, the slide of Quirmian silk, the crush of velvet and cashmere. Downey never understood how his father could sell these things and not want to relish in them. How could they pass through his fingers and not spark desire? How could he not want to sink into the smells, the tastes, the touch? What is the point of money if you don’t spend it on beauty? Gold kept cold on scales and next to abacuses is fine, but gold spent on charmeuse silk, well-tooled leather boots and dry champagne is a work of art. The butter of chardonnay and the juniper sting of a fine gin are the little things that make life that much more enjoyable. 

A few minutes later Annette returns with a small box. 

‘You didn’t come to the will reading,’ she explains. 

‘I assumed there was nothing for me to hear.’ 

‘Upon my death it will mostly go to Magda, some to Laure.’ 

‘And Sicily?’ 

She shakes her head. In the silence that follows she pushes over the box. Downey takes it up and opening finds his father’s timepiece wound, ticking away, and on time. 

‘I don’t want it.’ He closes the box, sets it in the centre of the table. Annette says that Amos left it to him. It’s in the will, in case he doesn’t believe her. It’s the only thing he left him. 

‘I don’t want it,’ Downey repeats. 

‘He left it to you, Will. I think it was his way of trying to make amends.’ 

The timepiece belonged to his grandfather before it ever came to Amos. Downey pulls the box over and looks at it again. The sheen of the rose-gold cover is warm, the tick of the gears turning calming. As a boy he would sit on his father’s lap and listen to the clockwork. He’d hold the watch up to his ear and nod along with the seconds. 

His family and gift giving - it’s not dissimilar to Vetinari who also has a tendency to give things instead of speaking. Although he has improved in the last six months. Downey suspects it’s a mixture of the man making an effort and he, Downey, learning how to speak his language. They’ve always been a complex tango. 

Downey finishes his tea, thanks his mother for her time. The box is between them. Like Annette’s apology, Downey doesn’t want this unexpected thing. In the end, manners and politeness override desire. He takes the box and pockets it. He tells his mother everything is fine and there’s no need to apologize for anything. It’s in the past. They don’t need to talk about it. 

Annette watches him leave out the front door. Downey glances back and gives a small wave. He is being very cheerful and continues to be very cheerful until he in private where he dumps his father’s watch into the bottom drawer of his desk, towards the back, and decides he will never think of it ever again. 

  
  


///

  
  


Downey wouldn’t know how to speak of these things even if he had the words for it and he doesn’t. He knows what his father called it. He knows what the law calls it. He knows what other men at the pub call it. He knows what ever-protective parents call it. He knows what he himself calls it in the privacy of his own head. 

But he wouldn’t know how to speak it aloud. It’s always been about secrecy. He covets and hates his own inaccessibility. What is he, if he isn’t half a secret? How can he be  _ him  _ if he isn’t half in shadows? 

As a young man he read the following,  _ a man’s power lay in the half-light, in the half-seen movements of his hand and the unguessed-at expression of his face. It is the absence of facts that frightens people: the gap you open, into which they pour their fears, fantasies, desires. _

Downey’s power, as much as his safety, lay in half-light. In half truths and half lies and halving the half, the quarters of thoughts, the quarter of an admission.

How could his mother think to ask? How could she think he’d speak?

 

///

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The "power is in half-lights" quote from Hilary Mantel's "Wolf Hall."


	10. Chapter 10

‘I have no idea what to do with it,’ Downey says.

Vetinari turns the watch over to the back. A small message is engraved, _My beloved I am yours, R._

‘Who’s R?’

Downey lifts his head, sees what Vetinari’s looking at. ‘Ruth, my paternal grandmother.’

Vetinari runs a thumb over the engraving. He turns the piece over and opens it to see the clock face. On the inside of the of front piece several names are inscribed of _Ruth, Amos, Isaac, Theodore._ Vetinari hazards a guess, ‘your grandmother and her children?’

‘Yes, my father and uncles.’

‘Are they still alive? Perhaps they would want it.’

Downey shakes his head. Isaac died at sea when he was young and Theo never married or had children and died over ten years ago. Anyway, Theo and his father weren’t close. They had a falling out over something. The watch closes with a soft click. Vetinari thinks it a gently elegant piece, which is very fitting of Downey’s family.

In this situation Vetinari isn’t sure what to suggest. What memories has he of his own father? None. Perhaps, if he tries very hard, he may conjure something of a large man who would pick him up but that’s the most he has. Not even a memory of laugh or voice and Madam always said that his father was a man who laughed easily.

There is no one there for Vetinari to respond to. Just an absence and he can’t begrudge a man for dying accidentally when his son is three. Besides, he considers his upbringing a fine one. There was an overabundance of affection, too much at times, and many people doting on him. He suspects the overabundance of affection and doting explain his general dislike of fawning expressions of love and companionship.

Downey, sensing the revere, nudges him with his foot.

Vetinari leans over and places the time piece on the bedside table next to the small, teak box is came in. It reflects candle light. There is such warmth in it, seems a shame to throw it away.

‘Perhaps think of it as your grandfather’s instead?’

Downey sighs, he had thought of that. It’s all fine, his hands flutter as if to dismiss the subject and he hauls himself up to sitting position. They’re facing each other, Downey against headboard and Vetinari leaning against a post at the foot of the bed.

‘I’ll figure something out. Maybe blot out my father’s name on the inside. Future generations will wonder who this man was that had his name etched off. They’ll hopefully come up with terribly elaborate explanations.’

‘Madam would say that you should learn to sit with uncomfortable subjects,’ Vetinari says realizing, as he says it, he sounds like Madam.

There remains something of the young man in him who resolutely declared he would never become like his parents. And yet here he is, wearing only one colour scheme with a strange small dog that no proper Tyrant would own. Just as Madam wears purple and keeps weird, ugly rescue cats instead of proper white, long haired ones. Or whatever else people who scheme and meddle in politics should own.

Though, unlike the young man he had been, he finds the development mildly amusing rather than mortifying.  

‘I could,’ Downey agrees. ‘But I don’t want to at this moment.’

As it’s night they are lit only by candles. Downey is looking at him then, apparently, a thought occurs, and he goes to his cloak to take out the yellow fabric from before and along with two other objects. Downey hands them over and Vetinari raises an eyebrow at the condom.

‘Rather racy, isn’t it?’ He asks before turning to the pink fabric. Ah, he notes, it’s wallpaper. It’s quickly placed to Grey Gardens - their rooms, the hallway, the stairwell. He can’t remember where else but it was around.

‘The art is by the man in question. The wallpaper came the other night along with a brief visitation.’

Vetinari frowns. Downey is cheerful about it so there is perhaps nothing of concern there beyond the usual _may end up dead_ concern that exists for all heads of the Assassin’s Guild.

That said, Downey is cheerful about most everything.

‘He was knicked,’ Downey continues. ‘Which helps with regards to identification. I can't remember what he looked like from when we lived next door - brown hair I think? Though that was thirty years ago.’

Vetinari shakes his head. He’s fingering the stain on the wallpaper. It’s a watermark browning the light pink. Their neighbour’s flat from Grey Gardens had the feeling of a transient space. Vetinari assigns the term _liminal space_ to it though Downey usually scoffs. Downey’s scoffing comes from being an active Assassin and so he views things in a matter of practicalities. Though that has ever been Downey’s way, viewing the world in terms of practicality and application of concepts.

Applied mathematics, applied physics, applied poisons (Downey also calls this _the poisons people actually die from when used in reasonable doses_ ).

Vetinari maintains that a room constructed as the ideal killing space is liminal in nature. Vetinari maintains this because he personally believes it and, more importantly, because it piques Downey and provokes something Ludo once called Rock Talk With William Downey.

The rules are simple: pick a mundane topic, such as a kind of rock (granite, limestone etc.), then ask Downey his opinion on it. Allow the conversation to become absurd and see how long Downey will maintain his position out of a sheer desire to be difficult.

It’s a game that only works in private and with a select few people. In public, Downey has few opinions and is always happy to change them if it is to his benefit to do so.

Vetinari hands over the wallpaper and picks up the rather fanciful, if bizarre, condom. The art is good, considering the limited space and potentially difficult material. The woman has no discerning features save for her hair which is splayed out beneath her, dark and tangling.

‘So people purchase these for the purpose of sex or as a collectors item?’ Vetinari asks.

‘Both I assume. I’m sure there’s someone out there who collects decorated condoms for no other reason than to have them.’

‘People are truly remarkable,’ Vetinari says. Downey looks at him with an expression of _really_. ‘They will never cease to find new ways to be wonderfully weird.’

Downey smiles at that, nudges Vetinari’s leg with his foot and says it’s just like him to respond to a condom painted with a dead woman in such a fashion.

‘Oh well,’ Vetinari shrugs. ‘I’ve always thought you never learn about people by snubbing or dismissing them. Rather, you must ask what it is they can give to the world that no one else can. What they alone can do. For some people it’s new discoveries, others it’s labour, others charity, and others still,’ he motions to the condom. ‘That sort of thing which serves its own unique and important purpose I’ve no doubt.’

Downey has become affectionate in his expression. Vetinari wishes he wouldn’t do that with such regularity. Downey says he has reevaluated things and changed his initial assessment from “Vetinari should never be a teacher” to “Vetinari could one day make a good teacher.” That’s the sort of philosophy one must have to succeed. Along with pragmatism and a deep rooted grasp on reality.

This unexpected compliment burrows deep into that space between diaphragm and lungs where nests Vetinari’s affection and other feelings relating to Downey, many of which are complex, unnamed and tangled.

Vetinari coughs, looks away from Downey towards the far wall adorned with a stillife of dead game and fruit. Downey moves forward, kneels across Vetinari’s thighs, and kisses him open mouthed. Downey is a physically present man when he wants to be, a fact Vetinari likes about him. The sheer physicality of shoulders, of arms, height, chest, those black eyes, easy smile, hands.

Hands which cup his face, as is Downey’s habit, before one slips back into hair. Vetinari puts hands on Downey’s chest, slides one down to make short work undoing of clothes. He wants Downey on his back and tells him this which results in Downey rearranging himself and pulling Vetinari on top.

Shift pushed up and trousers down, off, to the floor. Downey gropes Vetinari’s ass, he’s kissing his mouth, his neck, muttering about the man’s damned clothes. Their hands are over one another, kisses messy, open mouthed. In a pause Vetinari pulls away and sits back on his heels between Downey’s legs. Downey is looking hungry, aroused, disheveled. He’s a man who wears disheveled and debauched and dissolute well. It’s an expensive sort of disheveled, debauched and dissoluteness. The kind that costs more than what most people make in five years of work.

What he wants is Downey like this on the floor of the Oblong Office but he has done the cost-benefit-analysis and the numbers aren’t in their favour. At the moment. These things have such shifting variables. He’ll reassess at a later date.

He slides down between Downey’s legs, kissing along thighs, teeth scraping skin. A hitched breath, _gods._ Downey’s hands distractedly curl in sheets as Vetinari mouths, tongues, touches all those tender places between legs. Licking up to balls Vetinari wraps a hand around Downey’s cock, stroking hard and short. This garners a small collection of _fucks_ and _gods_.

A part of him wants Downey fucking him, where and how don’t matter. He wants Downey’s fingers in his hair, or against his hips, or digging into legs, he wants Downey’s cock up his arse, or down his throat, he wants to be fucked into things, against things but he also wants Downey like this. Making noises, muttering filthy things, almost begging and he could make the man beg if he wanted to. Rasped _pleases_ and _gods I want you, gods I need you_ and Downey’s legs spread a little wider, toes curl, he’s aching and hard. When he moves and takes Downey in his mouth it is to a roughly moaned _finally_.

Vetinari’s hand tight around the base of Downey’s cock, his free hand supporting weight. Stars above he wants to rub himself into the bed. He wants to rub himself up Downey, climb him like a gods-damned tree. He wants to feel only him and nothing else.

Downey’s hips twitch up, quickly down, trying to keep them still.

Vetinari thinks he’d let Downey fuck his mouth. He’d let Downey do all manner of things to him.

He strokes the base of Downey’s cock as he sucks. A glance up, Downey’s watching him. An intensity behind black eyes which is hunger, which is lust, which is a silent demand of _more_ but it’s also something more than all of that. Vetinari drops his gaze.

A hitched breath then a moan, Downey’s legs shift, muscles tighten, and he comes.

Vetinari leans up, lets Downey roll him onto his back, pressing their mouths together. He feels Downey’s hand between his legs. It’s something he likes thinking about, Downey’s hand on his cock, Downey’s fingers inside of him. At the moment Downey’s stroking him, whispering _gods you’re good_ and _I want you to come, I want your semen over my fingers._ He kisses down Vetinari’s neck, a soft trail until the nape where he bites, sucks against the skin.

Vetinari becomes aware that he is saying _gods_ and _Downey_ and _tighter_ and _fuck_ and Downey is murmuring against his ear all the details of things he wants to do which involve desks and office floors and riding crops and tying up and oh he likes hearing Vetinari moan like this, he likes seeing Vetinari come apart like this.

Vetinari’s hips push forward as he hooks a leg partially around Downey’s waist and ruts up into the man, his hand, gods he wants to bury himself in him. When he comes it’s with face pressed against Downey’s neck and hands in Downey’s hair.

They part slowly, an intimate pulling away. Downey, loath to let him go, keeps hands on Vetinari’s hips. A weighing of pros and cons of getting up ends with Vetinari shifting to allow Downey’s chin to rest on his shoulder.

‘Well,’ Downey purrs, his breath ghosting Vetinari’s neck, ‘that was delightful.’

Vetinari snorts, ‘you’re incorrigible.’

‘Yes, but delightfully so.’

They settle into one another and Vetinari again tends to the varied and complex tangle of thoughts that occupy the box in his mind labeled W. Downey, Lord, Assassin. It will not be sorted in one night but he thinks it a fine time to tug a thread or two out and see where they lead.

 

///

 

It is in the small hours when Downey walks back to the Guild, taking a torturous route through the city so he is coming home from a different angle than the Palace. The night smells sickly sweet of decaying food from the daily market, the jasmine climbing over walls of wealthy gardens, dying summer flowers hanging limp on their stalks already beginning the work of decomposition.

Downey lingers by the river for a smoke and to watch a few young boys discreetly mudlark along the banks with their thieves lantern held close to wiry bodies. Every so often the stand up tall and hold something up to moonlight for a better look. Coins, buttons, rings, nails, hook, hinges, locks, keys -- they disappear it all into their bags.

Somewhere nearby music strikes up. It’s cranked out on an old gramophone, Downey can tell by the gasping nature of the sound. He taps along to the beat until he realizes where he knows the tune from.

He slowly snubs the cigarette out, looks for the mudlarkers but the boys are moved on up the river. Downey drifts across the street towards the buildings lining the riverfront and allows shadows to consume him.

It’s the March of King Veltric II. A booming piece with ominous strings. It had played one night in Grey Gardens from five in the evening until two in the morning.

Downey walks towards the music. It comes from an inconspicuous building, the second floor, lilting out over cool city air from a partially opened window.

Assessing the house he thinks it must belong to someone of the middling classes - a merchant or doctor or wealthy artisan. The facade is modern but the bones of the house old. It sags a little towards the left, clearly the foundation is in need of repair. Old cellars sometimes give way to sinkholes or open pockets of the city the current iteration is built on top of.

The March of King Veltric II begins its stirring climax then fades away softly at the end. The song strikes up again from the beginning.

Downey thinks, you’ve got to be joking. It isn’t _that_ good of a tune.

The street is empty and what little light exists is from the moon. There are no boys to hire to run ahead of you with torches like in the livelier areas of the city. Here it is quiet. And dark.

An exhale.

Downey hears rather than feels it. He spins around but there’s no one to find. On the ground in the middle of the laneway between houses is a piece of rope. Downey picks it up, turns it over, and decides that things are becoming a bit much. He enjoys wild romps through murder filled literature with killers playing games with their pursuers but in his own life he prefers to keep it to a minimum.

Or, he’d like to be the one playing the game. Not the other way around.

When he and Vetinari were roommates they found a length of rope in their apartment after someone broke in. They found Downey’s book on the Quayside Killer disturbed. The March of Veltric II played on many a night.

Downey thoughtfully winds the rope up and pockets it. He returns to the window and the music continues on and on, over and over.

Sometimes Downey plays songs over in his head when he’s working as a self-created background noise that helps him concentrate when the Guild is too quiet which is many nights and during semester breaks.

Perhaps this is the person’s chosen song that helps them concentrate. Perhaps it’s an old favourite. Perhaps it’s an anniversary and this song held meaning. There are a thousand and one reasons for a stranger to be playing March of Veltric II in the middle of an autumnal night.

But he heard the breath. The rope is in his pocket. The killer used the pseudonym Foxe. These aren’t mere coincidences.

Going to the side of the house Downey walks the length of it and finds a gate that goes into a small courtyard. He swings open without a sound. Keeping to shadows he tries the back door which he assumes leads to a kitchen. Locked. Out come lockpicks and he is soon inside. It is indeed the kitchen he steps into and he finds it neat.

Unused levels of neat.

Unlived in levels of neat.

The music that had been feint outside is frantically loud inside. It contaminates every room. Out of habit, though, Downey levels his breathing and walks along the edge of floorboards, close to the wall, to reduce the sound of footsteps.

The front sitting room contains two plush chairs, a small round table, and a slim table beneath the window which is covered by green curtains.

The chairs and tables are covered in white canvas.

Downey, on repeat, _you have to be kidding you have to be kidding you have to be kidding_

There is a rug beneath the round table. The corner is upturned. Downey thinks that the gods must be having him on. This quasi-replica of his neighbour’s flat from Grey Gardens is absurd.

With care he positions himself so as to see up the stairs but the entire house is dark, the first floor more-so than the ground. He can’t make anything out. The March of Veltric II pounds. It fills every corner, every space for breath and thought. It feels like part of his brain is being chiseled away by violas, by cymbals clashing, by the horns raining down their violent noise.

A tintinnabulation.

He hadn’t realized how much the March of Veltric II puts him on edge. How his neck tenses when he hears it, how his jaw clenches.

Deciding to make a go of it, he begins a slow ascent up the stairs to the first floor. On the landing he can barely make out two rooms. One facing the street, where the music comes from. The other along the side and would face the laneway discovered the rope in.

Perhaps it’s paranoia but Downey feels watched. He keeps thinking that if he turns around he will see the killer. He will see him with his unkempt brown hair, his large coat, misshapen hat. Except the man is older than him. He’ll have white or silver hair, or maybe none at all. He’ll have aged. He won’t be the faded memory Downey holds.

Standing with back against the wall of the room with the music he still cannot make out much for the darkness. He breaths in a musty smell. Not the disused, dusty smell of the ground floor but the smell of someone living. Or of something recently dead.

Down the hall, Downey can’t see how far down, someone breaths out.

‘I remember you,’ a voice sighs. ‘You put a crossbow in my face.’

It’s the same shockingly soft voice from thirty years ago.

Downey doesn’t answer. He silently slides a knife into hand and waits. From the sound of the voice he thinks he can roughly position how far away the man is and therefore can guess from what angle he would attack.

Unless he has a crossbow.

‘It’s rude to break into people’s houses,’ the voice says. ‘You were raised better than that. I’m sure your mother raised you to be a gentleman.’

The music stops.

A breath out. Closer than before. Gods he can move lightly. But the man was small, if Downey remembers correctly. Slim with not much to him.

‘Would you be so kind as to turn the music back on.’

Downey thinks the man closer to the landing than he is to him. It’s a guess. The first floor is darker than anticipated. There is a suggestion of a figure, but that could be Downey’s eyes playing tricks.

‘Come now,’ the man whispers. ‘There should always be music.’

The man is creeping forward, based on the voice.

‘Your mother likes music,’ the man is becoming excited, although he remains feint in tone. ‘She plays a concerto by Stralenteski in the afternoon when she makes tea. Orange Pekoe. Eats egg tarts from the local bakery. She has three locks on the back door and three on the front. Did she always have those?’

Downey is like glass. He does not move.

The man has advanced so Downey can feel his presence which mean the man can probably sense his.

‘I read that book you had,’ the man is very close. Downey can smell him. It’s sweat, a bland aftershave and dead, wet flowers. ‘The one about Foxe, _I’ll Be Gone in the Dark_. I know you’re there. If I reached out I could touch you. Why won’t you speak? You’re being very rude. I dislike rude people.’

Downey desperately hopes the man is not a cliche and killed those women because they were rude. What a depressingly boring thing do. Then again, Downey reasons, all serial killers are boring.

It’s the victims and survivors who are interesting. The culture around the killers, the media, the narratives, the urban legends that are interesting. The men themselves, abysmally boring.

He does wish the man would stop talking about his mother, though.

‘How long has your father been dead? I couldn’t figure that out. I saw his picture on the mantelpiece. You look just like him. Almost identical. Were you close? He must have been proud to have a lord as a son.’

The voice begins to gain an edge.

‘I saw your sisters on the mantelpiece. What a happy family. They’re all very pretty. I like the one in the middle the most. Laure is her name, I believe. She had on such a pretty dress. How is she? Have you spoken to her recently? And her children? How about Magda and her daughter Samantha?’

The edge is more noticeable. It’s slowly overtaking his tone.

 

A hand presses against Downey’s chest.

‘There you are.’

 

The hand goes up to his face. It touches his nose, his cheeks, chin, lips, eyes.

‘You’re very good at not moving.’

It’s hard to gauge if the man is armed. Downey doesn’t want to startle him until he knows he won’t get stabbed in return. The man doesn’t seem inclined to rush the experience which is to Downey’s advantage.

A breath out, very close to him, it smells of old tea and egg salad sandwich. The hand on Downey’s face slides down to his pulse then he fingers the collar in place to prevent garrotting.

‘Checking to see if you were alive.’

The man draws away. Downey lunges forward. He catches a wrist, but the man twists and goes over the railing dropping to the stairs below. In seconds he is out of the house and Downey is alone.

 

///


	11. Chapter 11

Downey sits in a bath with a glass of wine and the night’s activities. He toes on the hot water. Watches the level rise. Toes it off. The early morning sun is soft through steamed windows.

He thinks about bodies. His own. The dead ones under Grey Gardens. The dead ones he’s created. Bodies are vehicles in this attempt at living, some poet once wrote.

Machinery is indeed what they are. Machinery that is both wondrous in what it is capable of while simultaneously ludicrous. The human back was a mistake. Vestigial organs that burst and murder the body that houses them. Jaws that are increasingly smaller and smaller while the amount of teeth remain the same. Teeth! Teeth are bizarre. They’re disgusting if you think about them too long. Same with finger and toenails.

A nameless man who calls himself Raymond Foxe touched his face.

Downey doesn’t mind touch. He isn’t like Vetinari who is picky about it. Downey likes camaraderie, embraces, handshakes, linked arms, squeezed shoulders - all those physical embodiments of companionship.

The nameless man whose name is not Raymond Foxe had cool hands. Had long, calloused fingers. Had rough, dry skin. Had petit arms. But Downey felt the muscles beneath fabric. The ropes taut and extending up the entire arm. The man is a physical labourer. He embodies his occupation.

The conversation turns over on its head. The nameless man had poor aim. He doesn’t know people the way Raymond Foxe knew his victims. Foxe was a collector of information. When he broke into a house, masked, holding a thieve’s light and pulling out the weapon he’s already stashed in your bedroom, your hall closet, he knows you so well it’s eerie.

And Foxe haunted with more precision than this nameless man. The pink wallpaper was in their apartment but it was also in the halls and the front foyer. The yellow fabric neither here nor there. The _Ankh-Morpork Times_ is full of the yellow dresses (not the yellow bones, the Watch hasn’t told De Worde and Cripslocke about that).

The nameless man knew of his family but didn’t know how to wield them. The nameless man didn’t know how to call up the past as a weapon.

Raymond Foxe, before he was caught, sent a letter to the daughter of one of the victim’s. He wrote _Do you want to play? Remember when I came to play? You should have watched._

This woman would later recount at his trial that when she was a girl she saw him in the hall wearing a brown mask, no breeches or trousers, and he said to her _I’ve come to play with your parents. You should watch._

Downey feels around for washcloth at the bottom of tub. With it he scrubs his neck, face, behind ears, down arms, over chest, sides, legs, then feet. He washes with care. Once feeling sufficiently scrubbed he wrings it out, and hangs it over the edge.

When finished with the bath he writes a short note to Vetinari, _My face was groped by a serial killer. I’m charging extra for that._

An hour later, a reply, _Due to your long and storied history of acting before thinking things entirely through I am unsurprised this happened to you. However, I accept the extra charges as I understand having one’s face groped by a serial killer is not part of expected inhumation activities. An aside, you have an appointment tomorrow at half ten in the morning._

Downey contentedly burns the correspondence. There isn’t a person better to share fantastical happenings with than the Patrician. Only a man like Vetinari would take such things in stride. Unperturbed. Calm like a glacial lake. If there’s a ripple of amusement, Downey’s pleased to be the one to have caused it.

 

///

 

It came to Downey’s attention a few years ago that the commander believes him to be a follower of rules. The commander isn’t wrong. Rules are important. They exist for a reason. The world is a series of specimen boxes and unto each box a set of rules applies.

Where the commander is wrong is _which_ rules it is that Downey believes in.

Downey believes in grace, in manners, in holding open doors and pushing in chairs. He believes in not speaking ill of the dead. He believes in using the right fork and knife and spooning soup away from you rather than towards. He believes in offering people drinks and never arriving to a dinner or event on time. He believes in polished shoes, starched collars, and civil conversations. He believes in the importance of being able to speak on any subject for at least ten minutes. He believes in the Art of Conversation. He believes in dancing with women neglected by partners and making sure everyone is well fed and well watered. He believes in beauty and civility and gentlemanly behaviour and doing the Done Thing, the Correct Thing. Downey believes in the rules of proper society.

Downey also believes in the rules of survival which means knowing when, and how, to break all the rules one should necessarily be following. It also means knowing when to observe them with exactitude. It means knowing when to play dirty and when not to. It means knowing how to perform the expectations of your station. And when not to. How to dress right for each occasion. How to attend social events with grace and dignity even when one doesn’t wish to be present and how to tactfully withdraw when necessary. It means knowing when rules are needed, when they’re not, and which rules it is that are required or expendable. In the end, it means doing whatever is required to keep head attached to shoulders and reputation and good name intact.  

Downey does not believe in the rules of morality. He does not believe in the rules that govern justice. This does not mean Downey doesn’t have morals. He does. It’s only, he’s realistic about people. Rules that guide whether or not you are In or Out are more powerful than rules motivated purely by morality and ethics. This does not necessitate that one is not informed by the other. It is only, at the end of the day, it’s about social contracts and contracts are upheld because the repercussions of breaking one are worse than the pain it takes to maintain the contract.

A simple cost-benefit-analysis. How ostracized from society do I want to be? How unacceptable do I want to be? How gauche? How ignored? How seen, but not in a pleasant way? Society spins on social clubs, everyone wants in to at least one and so will behave accordingly. Even the people who “rebel” against society do it in a predictable and rule-based way. They are participating as much in a club as the elite.

All of this aside, the key thing regarding the commander, though, is that Downey absolutely does _not_ believe in following rules when in a fight. The commander thinks street smarts would best an Assassin but the reality is: the man who is trained to kill since the age of 9 will always win, rules or no rules.

Downey most certainly does not believe in following rules when _taking care of a problem._ Which is the current situation. Things need to be sorted. They will not be sorted in a rule-based way.

 

Downey drinks his weight in coffee while informing Mericet that he must take the day to see to some business. Mericet replies that if it’s anything to do with mysteriously appearing letters and the occasional trap going off, it’s a long overdue piece of business. Really, what have you been doing with your time?

Running a Guild, Mericet. Teaching, Mericet. Other jobs as required, Mericet. In case you hadn’t noticed.

_Indeed._

Downey says with great affection, ‘you’re a brick, Mericet. A real brick.’ Mericet decants from the staff table murmuring that he’s done something terribly wrong if Downey thinks him a _brick_.

 

He returns to the row house from the night before. Once again entering through the back he is able to better assess the space in daylight. Everything is as it was last night, only silent. Canvas covering the furniture. A dusty, unused smell. The floors clear save for the rug beneath the table and chairs by the hearth. Walls bare and whitewashed.

Upstairs, the front room is empty save for a gramophone and the same heavy, green curtains that cover the windows on the ground floor. The second room he must lock pick but once in he finds a simple camp bed in the corner with white sheets. A wash basin in the opposite corner. A chamber pot tucked neatly at the foot of the bed. No armoire or closet. Only a single set of drawers which reveal simple workmen’s clothes when opened. Downey paws through the clothes but finds nothing of interest and carefully readjusts so everything is exactly as it was when he entered.

No bedside table. No candles. No lamps. No books, bags, towels, shaving kit - nothing to indicate someone lives in the building.

Identical, then, to the flat situation.

Downey leaves through the back, locking the door and making sure there are no footprints in the garden.

Down the street he stops at a paper stand for a box of matches and the morning paper. He asks, ‘There’s a house down the street, white exterior, curtains always drawn, looks like no one lives there. Do you know if it’s available?’

The young man counts out change while shaking his head. ‘No, sir, no one lives there that I’m aware of. It’s haunted though, so I wouldn’t buy it were I you.’

‘Haunted, you say?’

‘Fact.’

‘What kind of ghost?’

‘Woman in white haunts the attic and there’s a man from the days of the old kings who haunts the garden and another man who haunts the first floor.’

‘That’s a lot of ghosts.’

The young man shrugs as if to say, _so it goes_.

Downey takes his change save for a tip. ‘You know, you can hire people to take care of ghosts if you don’t want them around. Though, they generally don’t mean much harm and if you explain the situation they’re not the worst house guests.’

‘No, sir, not me, sir. I wouldn’t live in a house with a ghost for nothing. Not for anything.’

‘What do you know about the ghost that haunts the first floor?’

Another shrug. He knows nothing about that one. Only the woman in white who died whilst waiting for her lover to return from the war. Which war? He doesn’t know but it doesn’t matter. She wasted away after her lover died heroically in battle. They sent back his sword and shield and she wept over them every night until she died. The young man sighs dramatically.

Downey leaves him to his daydreams about lost loves. Checking his watch he decides to stop for another coffee before going to the palace for whatever appointment it is Vetinari has decided he needs to be present for. The man could make more effort to check with people’s schedules, Downey thinks. I _happen_ to be free this morning, even if I hadn’t passed off classes, but I might not have been. I could have been very busy indeed.

 

Downey arrives to find Vetinari seated at the table in his office with a selection of papers laid out in front of him. Every so often he rearranges them then ticks off something in a ledger.

‘I have an appointment,’ Downey announces after Drumknott has withdrawn from the room.

‘Indeed,’ Vetinari motions to the chairs. Downey takes the invitation. ‘The Confraternity for the Relief of the Poor and Homeless should be arriving soon.’

‘Ah.’

‘We’re to discuss the land arrangements.’

‘Right.’

‘I trust that is in order,’ Vetinari’s expression does not brook opposition.

‘I’ll update the Bursar on the changes tonight.’

‘Excellent.’

Downey can see the Bursar’s face. He had meant to update her on the matter already but it had slipped his mind. He should probably make better use of the diary Mericet buys for him every year as a very statement oriented Hogswatch present. In his defense, there have been extenuating circumstances. He doesn’t think the Bursar will allow that as an excuse.

Vetinari continues his cross-referencing work. Into the silence he says, ‘and the man who groped your face, how fare he?’

‘Still alive.’

‘ _Is he?_ ’

‘I have plans.’

‘I’m glad to hear it. Do they involve not letting him push every button you have?' 

‘I haven't the foggiest what you're implying. And the plans involve potentially using my mother as bait.’

Vetinari looks up with delicately raised eyebrow. Is Downey’s mother aware she’s to be potential bait? Not as yet, but she will be and he thinks she’ll be fine with it. For a given value of fine. Or maybe he’ll just use her house. Or maybe he won’t have to do any of that at all. It’s fuzzy but coalescing. It’s how complicated inhumations go - discordant until they aren’t anymore. Vetinari stares at him for a long moment, opens his mouth to speak then thinks better of it. He shakes his head and returns to his work.  

Drumknott knocks then opens the door to announce the arrival of the confraternity members. Key leaders and members of the guilds supporting the confraternity file in. There’s Mr. Thurrough of the Merchant’s Guild, Mr. Lancaster also of the Merchants, Mr. Pargeter of the Glaziers, various priests, Mr. Barrow of the Dyers and a second representative from the Dyers.

This second representative is introduced.

His name is said out loud, every syllable clearly enunciated.  

Thomas Genovese.

Thomas Genovese hasn’t noticed Downey. He’s saying something to Vetinari in that soft, watery voice. Then Downey is introduced.

Thomas Genovese smiles a small watery smile. Thomas Genovese shakes his hand. Same hand from the night before. The peculiar smell remains. It’s not sweat, it’s something particular to the man that seems to come from every pore. On Genovese’s right cheek is a small knick.

His hair is steel but still as messy and in his face as it had been thirty years ago.

Downey smiles. An ugly, vindictive look.

 

///

 

‘This was not pre-planned I assure you,’ Vetinari replies. He’s back seated at his desk and Downey stands in front of him bemused and unconvinced.

‘It was absolutely the man in question,’ Downey repeats.

Vetinari doesn’t doubt him. But he insists it hadn’t been planned. There was no long-con game in this. It was one of life’s many pleasant coincidences.

Downey fiddles with his hat, smoothes back his hair. He’s churning something over. Vetinari waits for the inevitable outpouring of thought. He is content with how things are settling down and wishes to have the situation resolved in this affable, gentle manner. With the prospect of a long, cold winter ahead of them he doesn’t wish to have a man who preys on homeless women prowling the streets.

‘My father would have known him. He was part of the confraternity until retirement,’ Downey says at length. ‘There’s a chance my mother met him.’

‘Ah.’

‘I was curious how he knew all our names.’

Vetinari tilts his head to the side. Downey clarifies, explains the face-touching incident in greater detail. How the man knew all of the names of the children and described them from miniatures. The only problem? Not all the miniatures had names on them. Laure’s, notably, didn’t.

‘He recognized me because I look like my father, an unfortunate trait.’

Vetinari shrugs. He looks like his father as well. It’s how it goes.

‘You didn’t know yours,’ Downey mutters. He quickly relents. ‘It doesn’t matter. I just wondered how he knew Laure and Sammy’s names.’

Vetinari taps the arm of his chair then says, ‘Madam says my father was a rather jovial man.’

‘You’re having me on.’

‘Apparently he took life rather more lightly than I do. She’s described him as gregarious, smiling and eternally optimistic.’

Downey squints at him. Vetinari assumes he is attempting to see Vetinari as a completely different person but in the same body. The man declares he isn’t sure he believes this. It's been years since Vetinari has managed to utterly floor Downey in so complete a manner. He finds the current situation delightful. Downey just blinks and shakes his head every few minutes.

‘He liked vaudeville, apparently.’ Vetinari continues. Downey snorts, still cautious. Still clearly contemplating saying _pull the other for it hath bells upon it_.

‘Mimes?’ Downey asks.

Vetinari, primly, ‘I haven’t inquired.’

Now Downey laughs, placing his hat on in a jaunty manner he bids Vetinari good-day.

 

///


	12. Chapter 12

The first act is to explain to his mother that Harold will not make a mess. He is at first obtuse in his reasoning of why he wants Harold to remain with Annette regardless of where she is but then is forced into concrete conversation.

‘I met him,’ he says. Harold sits calm by his knee, Downey scratches the back of his head. ‘Grey Gardens.’

Annette stills. Her hands wrap around teacup. She is made of apprehension.

  


Gene Lovery had a book written for her. The Quayside Killer had a book written for his victims, one that was integral to his eventual capture. Grey Gardens never had that. Those women are nameless and Downey suspects they will remain nameless forever. They are the homeless and therefore the unknown. The Other. The most unseen population of the city. Even more than homeless men are homeless women filtered out of eyesight.

This was the purpose of the confraternity established for their relief and aid. To see them and help, as much is able.

It is most likely from these numbers Thomas Genovese chose his victims.

He was the most invisible of killers. His victims the most invisible of people.

What was it that was written in _I Will Be Gone In the Dark_?

“If you commit murder and then vanish, what you leave behind isn’t just pain but absence, a supreme blankness that triumphs over everything else. The unidentified murderer is always twisting a doorknob to a door that never opens. But his power evaporates the moment we know him. We learn his banal secrets. We watch as he’s led, shackled and sweaty, into a brightly lit courtroom as someone seated several feet higher peers down unsmiling, raps a gavel, and speaks, at long last, every syllable of his birth name.”

But Thomas Genovese will never have the parade of a trial that Raymond Foxe was gifted. That Gene Lovery’s husband was dragged through. Downey isn’t sure if that’s something Genovese would want or not. Foxe revelled in it. He had this charm that came out when the stage light was bathed over him. There’s a reason serial killers in yellow-back novels are most usually based on him. Are informed by him, whether the author intended it or not.

Genovese doesn’t have that same galavanting nature. That same panache.

Ankh-Morpork will never hear every syllable of his birth name: Thomas Genovese. This is something Downey believes to be a good thing, there is no satisfaction for the killer of being known and reviled. Though, there is a part of him that in this _particular_ case, can see the commander’s point on needing to hang such men high and dry where all can see. Some incivilities should be acknowledged, some rudeness and ungovernability reproached.

But that’s not going to happen. Thomas Genovese is going to die alone save for Downey. And no one else will know his name. Because life isn’t a novel where justice is served in a way befitting narrative completeness. Sometimes there is no closure and instead, the guilty are gone in the dark.

  
  
Annette prompts him, ‘you met him?’

Downey pours them both more tea. He brought lemons for her so they both have small slices floating in orange pekoe.

‘Dad was part of the Confraternity for the Relief of Homeless and Poor, wasn’t he?’

‘He was, I have his papers from it if you need them--’

‘No, no, I don’t. I was at a meeting today with the confraternity. He was there.’

She emits a surprised _oh_. That is unexpected. Contradictory. How could someone dedicated to charity commit such crimes? Downey replies the same way a man who is part of the Watch can do such things, the same way doctors kill their patients, the same way husbands kill wives.

‘What’s his name?’ Annette asks.

‘Thomas Genovese. He’s perhaps five to seven years older than me.’

‘Maybe -- Maybe I know his name.’

Downey points out that memory is unreliable. She might think she remembers it because it’s something she’d want to remember, or because he’s said the name and so on. Annette shrugs, what can she do but say the name sounds a little familiar? Maybe Amos mentioned it, maybe he didn’t.

Annette looks to Harold with his gentle expression. She asks, ‘so why do you think I need this dog?’

‘Harold is well trained,’ Downey assures her. ‘He won’t take over your bed if you tell him to stay on the floor.’

The dog would be taller than his mother if he were to ever stand on his hind legs. Harold shakes his head, wiggles his body then lies down.

‘You didn’t answer my question,’ Annette points out.

‘I had an idea but it changed recently. I was thinking of you staying here with Harold, but that’s altered,’ Downey says attempting to find a way to phrase this delicately. ‘Instead, how would you feel about spending a few nights at the Guild? Harold will still be there and I think you should bring him whenever you go out.’  

‘Oh! Well --’

‘It won’t be too long.’

She is uncertain. Downey hopes she understands the _why_ without his needing to say it. She shuffles her fingers about on the edge of the teacup then it’s set down and she flutters.

‘It’s really very nice,’ Downey continues. ‘Excellent tea service, a fine garden, the students aren’t too obnoxious and they’ll leave you alone I’m sure. Mericet is good company, Lady T’Malia as well. Miss Band is pleasant as is Monsieur de Balourd.’

‘William.’

He smiles a winning smile. _There_ is a tone that hasn’t changed in over thirty years. The tone of a mother who is about to disapprove of something a child has done.

‘Are you -’ she gropes for words. ‘Have you been, that is, has someone um--’

‘Enlisted my services against one Mr. Genovese?’

She nods.

‘You’ve been living here alone since dad died and I thought you could use a change. Companionship,’ he motions to Harold. ‘But better still, a change of scenery. A bit of lush living. A break from housekeeping.’ For no one, he thinks. Housekeeping an empty house. Not even a ghost to enjoy it.

Annette picks up her tea. She doesn’t know what to think. She declares that Downey should have said something. She has always been careful, but if she had known she’d have been more careful. But nothing has been disturbed, she says. She’s sure she would know. No one can put things back exactly as they were before. _She_ would know. Hadn’t Amos been the same? Everything has its place. There is a proper order to life, just as there is proper order to a house.

Downey thinks this a depressing speech but she is so proud. He also doesn’t wish to tell her that someone has been in the house. Someone has been watching. All of her nightmares come true, in a word.

‘Come stay at the Guild. There’s a fancy bathtub you could swim in,’ he says softly. ‘You’ll be able to discuss quilting with Professor Stone.’

‘You’re like your father, you know.’ She pats his hand lovingly. ‘You’re just gentler about getting what you want.’

Downey feels a peak of anger but reminds himself that she considers this a compliment. He also resists the temptation to state things plainly. That he isn’t doing this because he wants to, but because it’s a necessity. There are differences. Indeed, he’d rather no member of his family stay with him but that would wound her and he doesn’t wish to undo the little progress they’ve made in coming to know one another again.

‘Two or three days,’ he says. He is still soft about it. ‘You’ll like it.’

‘I’ll be out of place. I don’t have fine clothing.’

‘It’s no matter.’

She frets but allows herself to be convinced. Downey insists that as she’s still in her blacks she won’t stand out at all. Quite the opposite. She’ll blend in. She could wallpaper herself, if she wants. This soothes. He promises everything will be wrapped up shortly and she won’t have any more disruptions. This reassures.

‘Whatever it is you’re planning, Will, I do hope you’ll clean up after yourself.’

‘Comes with the territory. Don’t worry, not a hair will be out of place.’

‘Only, I like to keep things how he had them. Do him proud, even in death.’

‘Sure,’ Downey sighs. ‘Don’t worry. He wouldn’t notice a thing out of place.’

  


///

  


Considering that Genovese is cornered it’s likely his patterns will alter. This is only normal. Downey believes two parameters are shifting which will force Genovese out of his traditional approach. The first parameter is that he knows he is being hunted, the second is that he is showing indications of escalation. In Downey’s experience, serial killers escalating is part of the overall trend in their behaviour. Raymond Foxe went from rapes and assaults to rape and murder. That fellow in Genua from decades ago, Theodore Borre, graduated from rape to rape and murder to rape and murder and necrophilia.

The being hunted and wishing to deter the hunting is possibly the prompting for the changing from luring to pursual. Indeed, it could be the reason he is even re-visiting old habits.

If he ever stopped.

Downey starts the proper hunt at the dye works by the river. There is Genovese amongst the other men although he doesn’t seem to speak much with them. Lunches he eats alone. Tea is had at a pub and his homes are dotted across the city.

He has a flat by the racecourses, near the Grey Gardens’ neighbourhood. He has another in Dolly Sisters, the house riverside. In none of these residences does he present signs of living. He lights no lamps, travels through rooms with a candle or two, and plays music on the ancient gramophone.

No wonder the newsstand boy thought the house was haunted. These are the behaviours of a phantom.

On the third night Downey watches Genovese attend a confraternity meeting then, afterwards, the man takes off towards the the closest docks. By the river’s edge thick fog rolls over the streets. A soupy effect of shifting seasons but through it there are the shadows of seamstresses, whispers of mollies and rent boys, further on low bonfires around which homeless and dispossessed gather.

Genovese seems known, shaking hands and speaking to a few with head bowed as if humbling himself. At this bonfire it’s all men. Eventually Genovese moves on. As he progresses Downey shadows him. It’s unclear if Genovese knows he is being followed. Downey never assumes he is unseen or unknown. That way lies eventual death at the hands of a target.

Another gathering of people includes a number of women. Genovese lingers here longer, again shaking hands, again speaking with stooped posture. He talks to them all then returns to one in particular. Downey can only see her back but she looks to be average height, sporting a slumped hat such as a beret, and large, dark coat. Her shoes are flat soled, the bit of her frock to be seen beneath coat is an indiscernible colour. The dark and the fog hindering eyesight.

Ten minutes later Genovese takes his leave. He deviates up from the river, heading in towards the racetracks when he suddenly doubles back and takes up a position hidden in shadows of a doorway.

The street they’re in is small, more a laneway. It drips, the fog gusts up from river and the cloying scent of fish hangs in the air.

Downey waits in his own shadows. Fifteen minutes pass. Half an hour. A pair of seamstresses walk up the lane laughing, drunk, they’re mocking a punter and half-singing a dirty sailor song. One wears a cherry red dress with purple petticoats, sloping shoulders, tapered sleeves - it’s the most colour Downey has seen since night descended. Soon, they disappear around a corner and into the night.

Another ten, another fifteen and a figure comes slowly up the lane. It’s the woman from the bonfire with the slouched hat and oversized coat. She passes Genovese, she passes Downey. Genovese waits a minute then follows. Downey trails after.

  


Is this how Genovese has always performed his ritualized murder? Pursuing likely candidates? Downey assumed the man would lure them somewhere - the promise of a meal or new clothes or a warm place to sleep. They’d know him from the confraternity. They’d trust him. But perhaps not, perhaps he always pursued them. Perhaps he had always been that kind of creature.

The whys and wherefores aren’t of much importance at this juncture but there remains a part of Downey’s mind that is always home to Vetinari. It’s where he tucks these thoughts that will come up in future conversation. As a young man he once described the lover as someone who lights all the fires in the grates and every candle and lamp, opens all the windows, then builds a room for themselves in the midst of one’s mind.  

When they leave that room, or he evicks them from that room, everything shutters into darkness.

Vetinari lights his fires slowly. He’s patient and intentional. Each candle, deliberate. There’s no building a separate room, merely lighting up the space he’s always inhabited. This is possibly more terrifying than the building of a room but it’s a terror he wishes to come to know the face of.

 

  
Genovese suddenly speeds up. The pungent smell from the night before hangs in the air. He comes up on the woman, wraps a hand around her mouth and nose and takes her, almost gently, into an alleyway.

Downey duly trots after him into darkness.

The sound of struggle emanates from behind a pile of crates. Downey edges forward and watches Genovese suffocating the woman. Amidst the scuffles and muted noise of distress the man speaks. Watery voice, he slithers through a sentence. ‘You’ll be warm and safe and loved and cared for and held --’

Downey thinks, Gods he’s one of _those_ serial killers. One of the angels of mercy.

Downey steps forward.

Genovese looks up to Downey who must be mostly shadow. A form of blacks and greys save for hair that can be seen beneath hat.

Genovese doesn’t speak. Instead, he squeezes harder.

He could break her neck, Downey notes. But he hasn’t despite being at the optimal angle for it. Her back to his chest, his height, the placement of his arms &tc.

Downey smiles at him, reaches forward and pries the grasping hand off the woman’s nose and mouth.

‘Shall we have a conversation?’ He asks.

In Genovese’s uncertainty the woman ducks out from between them and runs down the alley to the lane. She doesn’t look back. She doesn’t make a sound. She leaves no sign of her having been here.

‘Your place is nearby, isn’t it?’ Downey continues. ‘The one near the horse tracks? Shall we go there? Old time’s sake, you know, being in that neighbourhood. Come now, don’t be shy. We’re due for a small chat since our meeting the other night ended so abruptly.’

Unable to remove his arm from Downey’s grip, and seemingly without weapon, Genovese relents. He says he’ll go quietly enough but could Downey loosen his arm? It hurts.

Downey does not heed the request.

He cheerfully tucks the arm into his and with free hand places a knife to Genovese’s side. He says they’ll be going now. It’s a bit of a walk but a fine night for it. The weather hasn’t become unseemingly cold. Merely brisk. The sort of temperature that gives you a bit of life and colour to your cheeks.  

Genovese does not reply.

In this manner they make their way to the flat by the racecourses - Downey happily chattering on about whatever comes to mind, Genovese walking stiffly beside him. If any find them a curious sight no one thinks it in their interest to intervene.

‘This is a different form of invisibility,’ Downey informes Genovese as he pushes the man up the stairs to the flat. ‘Being very wealthy while engendering a great deal of fear. It’s amazing what people suddenly don’t see.’

The door to the flat opens and Genovese is pushed through first but still held firmly by Downey who locks the door and directs the men to put a chair beneath for good measure. A second chair remains and Downey motions to it with the knife.

Genoese sits, wide eyed and rabbit faced. The pungent odor has changed to one more familiar. Downey would know the smell of fear anywhere. It’s a particularly unpleasant one that sinks into clothes and lingers in rooms.

It’s a smell that accompanies death, in Downey’s line of work. The odour of fear then the release of bowels, the other effusions of the body once the heart stops. It is, he idly thinks, one of the reasons why he suspected Vetinari wouldn’t make a life-time career out of inhumation. Too foul and fluid-ridden an undertaking.

Genovese’s eyes dart from Downey to the table to the corners of the unlived in room. All the canvas coverings, save for the bed.

‘Did you ever stop?’ Downey asks. ‘Or did you just move to a new location?’

Genovese says he doesn’t know what Downey’s talking about.

‘Don’t be boring, Mr. Genovese. I dislike boring people. Consider my views of the Commander as exhibit A on this point. Oh, perhaps you don’t know them. In short: detest the man. Can’t stand him. He’s a tiny thing with an unfortunate face, not unlike yourself, and he has the great misfortune of being terribly boring. I could forgive his ugliness if he were interesting. It’s a positive crime that he is both ugly and uninteresting. Stay where you are.’

Downey slowly side steps to a convased table and loosens the rope. In that moment Genovese darts forward, aiming for the waist and crashes into Downey which is not unlike crashing into a wall.

‘I teach hundreds of students, Mr. Genovese. Do try and be cleverer than them.’

He helps up the man, dusts him off, then directs him back to the chair. Once ropes are secure Downey leans against the table to order his thoughts on what to tackle first before the man potentially becomes hysterical and starts making noise.

Though, Thomas Genovese doesn’t seem the hysterical type.

Interviews of this kind dissolve the world around them so it becomes only two people and no room, no essence of body - only their voices. It’s an act of timelessness. Suspension of _now_ in favour of _then_. Everyone focuses on the past. Everything becomes unreliable and recreated.

‘So why? Were you trying to help these women go to a better place?’ Downey starts. ‘Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong. Now, I have a friend who would be curious - what brought you to that decision?’

‘I’ve done nothing worse than what you do.’

‘Spare me, I’ve heard variations of that for the last thirty five years of my life. I know every version of the song. What made you decide to kill homeless women, bury them around where you lived, and paint some of their bones yellow? We can take that as three separate questions if it’s easier for you.’

‘You rid the world of certain people but you do it for money.’

‘Correct.’

‘I do it for the good of society.’

‘Why women?’

‘Simplicity.’

‘Homeless?’

‘Invisibility. As you said, there’s different kinds. Homeless women are even harder to see than homeless men. It’s like they become blankness. Do you know how many are assaulted? How many die? How many suicide? It’s all in greater numbers than men. But no one knows that.’  

‘What about the one with the signs of violence? The severed wrist and trauma to the skull?’

‘Not mine. She was there already. But I re-buried her in the proper manner.’

‘And Mrs. Amarillo? She wasn’t homeless.’

‘No. She kept interrupting me during devotions.’

‘Devotions?’

‘Everynight I make them.’

‘Do they involve your victims?’

‘Sometimes.’

‘Why yellow?’

‘There’s a place we all go to when we die and it’s yellow. It’s made of gold. It’s shining. I was sending them there. You could say I was doing good for both society and them. No longer do they suffer and how I killed them wasn’t painful. You know what a good death is. Suffocation is like drowning without water and they say drowning is like going to sleep.’

‘I know that we only know what it feels like to die certain deaths. The deaths of those who could come back and tell us. The, uh, differently alive, as they’re called now. But most died violently. Stabbing, beating, execution and the like. I’ve personally never met a zombie or a ghost who was suffocated.’

‘Or poisoned.’

‘Or poisoned with what I predominantly use. Therefore we can’t really say how painful suffocation is. So you painted the bones in homage of this afterlife we go to. Not terrible, _bones_ is a golden word after all. When did you start?’

‘My first that I sent off or my first that I paid homage, as you say, to the world of the dead with?’

‘Both.’

‘First I paid homage and that was with my mother’s bones. Then I started sending them off. There was a man at the confraternity who told me “look after this woman and see she makes it to such and such a place for a meal.” One of the temples that do free food. I looked at her and do you know what I saw? I saw what a waste that meal was going to be. What would she do after she eats it? Go back to the street, go back to begging, go back go back go back and she was so dirty. She smelled. She was ugly. She was old. She had these twisted, gnarled fingers. Oh if you had seen her your lordship you’d have done the same. I sent her to the golden place so our city wouldn’t have to feed one more mouth. There are so many. The man who sent me to walk her to the temple for a meal kept the accounts of the confraternity and I saw the numbers. I saw how much we were pouring into the lives of these people who have no lives worth living. Not at the price we were paying for them.’

‘Every life has a price.’

‘Lives worthy of prices have a price. Her life was worth nothing.’

‘Even the lowliest have a price.’

‘You don’t believe that. You’re like me, only posh and educated and respectable.’

This draws Downey out of the inward spiral of the conversation. He is suddenly back in a flat near Grey Gardens and it’s musty, smells of damp. There’s a man smelling of sweat and musk and fear tied to a chair. There are probably dead women beneath their feet and in the walls.

Downey says, ‘You have no idea what it is that I believe. I do wish people would stop assuming they know me or what it is I am made of. It’s rather annoying. Society isn’t “too good,” or what have you, for anyone. We are what makes it up. The whole is not better than the parts that form it. Our whole body is not better than the skin and blood and bones that make it up so it goes for the whole of society. However, there are standards that must be maintained and you are not up to it. You are not sound.’

Genovese shakes his head slowly, it drops down so his gaze is on his lap. His head shakes and shakes and shakes.

Downey watches him for a sad minute then produces from a pocket within his kit a case of soft leather. He unrolls it and takes out a vial and a needle. This catches Genovese’s attention for he lifts his head to watch Downey, mesmerized.

Prepping the needle Downey continues in a more conversational tone, ‘so you buried seventeen in Grey Gardens, perhaps more, where are the other women?’

‘Around.’

‘Entertain me.’

The prepped needle is set on the casing. Downey kneels down and begins taking off Genovese’s shoes.

‘Home. Mother is home where she always was,’ Genovese replies.

‘Where’s home for mother?’

‘The garden.’

‘Did she help the tomatoes come up lovely?’ Downey sets the boots aside and takes off stockings. They are folded and set next to the boots.

‘She did. Like her great aunt.’

Going to the wash basin Downey pours in water then brings it over. A cloth is procured from the side of the wash stand and he wipes down Genovese’s feet.

‘So you’re Lovery’s grand nephew?’

Genovese shrugs. Downey presses the point: is there family relation?

‘Very well, yes my grandmother was Gene’s sister.’

Downey sits back on his heels and looks up at the man. He takes in the water eyes, watery face with its watery smile. The lank, uninspired hair. The strange smell that has lessened since Genovese seems to have resigned himself to his fate.

Downey sighs, declares that you can’t get everything, then goes to the table.

‘No, you can’t,’ Genovese agrees.

‘I would have hoped for someone related to Gene Lovery to be something more. Not a sad, pitiable thing like you. We’ll be digging up your golden women for years, won’t we?’

‘In all the city’s cornflowers, beneath the spring tulips, under beds where babes sleep.’

‘And Raymond Foxe? His name as a pseudonym?’

‘I remember you. You look like your father; just like him. But I told you that already, didn’t I? I remember when you lived next door with that ugly, moody boy. You had a book on Foxe. I thought you might appreciate it.’

‘And the dead women on condoms?’

He half-shrugs, as much as allowed with the ropes. He had to make some extra money. He figured it wouldn’t hurt.

‘Were the women you painted --’

‘My women? Oh yes.’

Downey purses his lips. That’s not the Done Thing, he informs Genovese. That isn’t the Done Thing at all.

Taking up the needle Downey kneels down on one knee, a nighttime benediction, and picks up one of Genovese’s feet. Gently, gently he injects peaceful, soft death at the base of the smallest toe.

Genovese takes a few minutes to die during which Downey unties him and carries him to the bed. Once expired, Downey draws up the blankets and arranges him appropriately so he is peaceful, merely sleeping. Tidying up Downey taps a few floor boards. He inspects the wall, devoid of wallpaper. There is a water stain against one part near the back of the room. Downey stares at it. Taps the wall. There is no hollow plaster sound.

How much digging is necessary now that the man is dead? The women unidentifiable? That isn’t his decision to make.

The room is returned to exactly the state it was when they entered. Not a thing out of place. Everything just so, in a way that would have made Amos Downey proud. 

At the door Downey stops. Turns around and carefully flips a corner of the rug over. He smiles. 

  


///


	13. Chapter 13

Extricating Annette Downey from the Assassin’s Guild proves more difficult than getting her to the place. A week in its luxury and she is loath to return across the river to Grace Church. Downey hardly blames her. Their home feels contained, cold and with a weight that lingers in the hallway, the parlour, the counting room. Even up the stairs, the tension of the house remains. Filling corners, sinking into the bones of the structure. 

Houses collect history of the lives lived within it the way bodies collect traumas. Downey thinks most hauntings are just signs of a troubled family. 

Annette, petit in her mourning blacks, says that she hasn’t had an opportunity to learn all the names of the lovely young ladies of the Black Widow house. 

‘There’s Miss Ivy Gloucester, then Miss Francine Warren, Miss Esma Carvalho, she’s a good girl--’

‘Of course you’d say that,’ Downey mutters. He’s making them a drink and has spent the last half hour attempting to explain that really she should go home or else her bridge club will start gossiping. ‘Miss Carvalho is a terror.’ 

‘Gives you a run for your money at that age, then.’ 

Downey rolls his eyes. ‘She drives all the teachers up the walls. That said, absolutely brilliant. She’ll go places if she doesn’t get herself inhumed first.’

‘Her mother is Sarah Carvalho, do you remember her? Well, you would have known her as Sarah Romano. Your father contemplated you marrying her for a brief while. But it wouldn’t have been suitable.’

‘Brown hair, lots of it, prone to spots when she was sixteen?’ 

‘Don’t be mean.’ 

‘I’m not! That’s all I remember of her. Sarah Romano -- Laure was friendly with her I think. I remember her brother Yossi.’

‘He took over the family business but is in Klatch now, I hear.’ 

Downey dredges up a hazy memory of Yossi Romano. They had been around the same age, give or take a year, and ran in the pack of boys that ruled Grace Church at the time. Like his sister, lots of brown hair, much acne. 

Snapping fingers, Alsace rouses herself and siddles over for pets. Downey says that he and Yossi lost touch around the time he went to the Guild. Really, he lost touch with most of his early friends at that time. It was when he slipped from Will into William. Merchant into Assassin. One identity, one life, shifted meaning into another. 

Will Downey meant one boy at eight, another at ten. 

‘So,’ he prompts. ‘Shall I have someone help you with your things?’ 

‘You’re being so sly, Will. I can only assume you’re hiding something,’ she laughs. Then she stops, unsure if they’re at this level of familiarity yet. Downey is smiling. Downey is always smiling. ‘You were not a secretive boy.’ 

‘What did I have to be secretive about at ten? My licorice stash, maybe.’ 

Annette waves her hand. He knows what she means, but she’ll move on. Groping for common ground she asks, ‘So how did your uh -- well the issue you were --’ 

‘My latest job?’ 

‘Yes.’ 

‘Well,’ his smile becomes genuine. ‘It’s all wrapped up.’ 

‘Good, good. I’m glad to hear it.’ 

‘You’ve nothing to worry about.’ 

Annette relaxes into the chair. Her shoulders loosen, she sets her drink aside, she wishes to know only the pertinent details. This Thomas Genovese is dead? And he died last night? And William is sure the man is dead? Will there be an autopsy? Just to make extra sure? 

‘I doubt it. But don’t worry, he’s not a danger anymore. Do you want one of the three locks on the front and back doors removed?’ 

Annette looks around his sitting room. The plants climbing up windows, the warm fire, the books, desk filled with papers, the map on the wall with locations pinned in. She asks how many weapons are in this room alone? He replies that everything is a weapon, if you know what you’re doing with it. Has she heard about Robert Selachii? Beat a man to death with a decanter. It’s on Downey’s check list of inhumation tactics. He’s yet to have the opportunity. 

‘No trial for him’ Annette says. ‘I don’t know how you went to Foxe’s every day.’ 

‘I went to make sure he hanged. So you would know that he hanged.’ 

She tilts her head. That’s a thoughtful thing, she hadn’t expected it from him. He is shocked she hadn’t known. At the time he even asked her if she wanted to go. For closure. And she had declined citing the circus-nature of the event. 

‘It’s still the victims that matter,’ she declares stoutly. She begins to stand but Downey motions her down. He will get whatever it is she needs. Another drink, then her bags. She’ll be off after this. Once she finds those lovely ladies to say goodbye. ‘I suppose we’ll never know their names.’ 

Downey shakes his head. No, they’ll never know their names. Memories of them cannot be created when all there is to work with is bone, dust and a splash of yellow paint. 

  
  


///

  
  


‘Really, it’s your mother you have to thank,’ Vetinari says. He thumbs through the  _ Collected Autobiographies _ . It’s cards tonight and Downey is shuffling the next round. ‘If she hadn’t offered you a free pick of her book selection none of this might have happened.’ 

‘How very quirmian-butterfly of you.’ 

Vetinari elegantly shrugs. He’s not against the theory. Although he believes some people can take it too far. Looking for the deepest meaning in little things of no consequence. Or big things of no consequence. 

‘The commander came to me in a huff,’ Vetinari continues as Downey deals the cards. ‘He asks to be informed next time the ah “law is taken into a private party’s hands due to strained resources”.’ 

‘He was that polite, was he?’ 

Vetinari purses his lips. He rearranges his hand. ‘He also asked that you stop “corrupting” his officers. His word, not mine.’ 

‘Corrupting. Gods, what year does he think this is? The blonde captain is the only redeemable one of the lot.’ 

‘I had wondered how you got access to the dresses and bones.’ 

‘She’s terribly handy to have as a connection.’ 

Vetinari plays with a card before laying it down in the discard pile and picking up a new one. Downey watches him then asks, ‘what?’ 

‘You know what she is, right?’ 

‘Secretly into women but is with that lughead of a cop for mysterious reasons?’ 

Vetinari blinks owlishly. He says that no, that isn’t what he meant at all and he will have to revisit that statement at a later date. He can’t help himself and adds ‘Really? Are you sure?’

‘Reasonably.’ 

‘Fascinating. Adjacent to that, could the reason why Captain Angua is with Captain Carrot be that she loves him?’ Vetinari deadpans. Downey, disgusted at the thought, declares that there has to be another reason. Maybe he’s rich. But if he were, why would he be in the Watch? Maybe he’s good in bed, though Downey personally doubts this. 

‘But,’ Downey says, ‘you were going to tell me something?’ 

‘You know the Watch has a werewolf, right?’ 

Downey nods, oh yes, he’s aware --  _ oh _ . 

Vetinari, ‘ _ oh _ indeed.’ 

‘Ah.’ 

‘Yes.’ 

‘Hum.’ 

‘Quite.’ 

‘I knew I liked her for a reason.’ 

Vetinari owl-blinks again. This is a night for Downey non-sequiturs it appears. 

Downey explains, ‘werewolf, dog - similar, right? Great animals. Better than people. I don’t think she knows about this.’ He motions to the space between them. 

‘I should hope not.’ 

‘Well, I missed that by about fifteen miles,’ Downey says amiably. ‘How long have you known?’ 

‘Since she arrived.’ 

‘I could have used the heads-up, you know.’ 

Vetinari agrees. Only, he hadn’t counted on Downey reversing his stance of “all Watch members should shuffle off the mortal coil” to make an exception for one. But seeing as they’re friendly, Downey is now aware. 

The next two rounds are played in silence. 

On the third Downey says, ‘I could inhume her just in case.’ 

‘No.’ 

‘And that disgraceful thing she calls a partner.’ 

‘No.’ 

‘I’m open to discussions regarding a reduced price. A two-for-one sort of deal.’ 

‘Play the game.’ 

Downey grins. Vetinari’s face is one that says, You’re being utterly ridiculous. The game comes to a close with Vetinari winning by a small margin. Downey asks if there’s anything Vetinari wants to know. Any burning questions about their former neighbour? 

Vetinari clears up the cards, neatly ordering them and putting them back in their box. He isn’t sure if there’s anything he  _ needs  _ to know. And anything he had questions about, he’s not sure Downey would have thought to ask. Their interests being divergent on this matter. 

Except one thing: ‘Why yellow?’ 

‘Ah,’ Downey gets up to make them another drink. ‘He believed that the afterlife is yellow and gold. He was sort of paying homage to it.’ 

‘An angel of mercy killing?’ 

Downey returns with two brandies, each with a twist of orange peel. 

‘No,’ he sits, dropping one hand down, the universal signal to dogs that pets are to be had. Mr. Fusspot trundles over. ‘He thought we, as a society, spent too much money on the homeless.’ 

‘How ill informed.’ Vetinari watches Downey for a moment then declares that on the whole he is pleased with how things turned out. A rather calm end to an unfortunate affair. And just in time, too. Madam has declared her intent to visit in the near future. ‘She has a habit of turning up without too much warning. She gives vague timelines, “sometime in the near future” or “perhaps summer, perhaps autumn.” Then before you know it, she’s at your door making inquiries into your personal life and telling you to buy a lint roller.’ 

‘Marvelous,’ Downey says with enthusiasm. 

‘I wouldn’t want her here with things unsorted. It’d be an embarrassment.’ 

‘I’m sure it wouldn’t be.’ 

‘She’d ask pointed questions and then she’d provide advice.’ 

Downey shrugs, sounds like a normal parenting thing to do. Vetinari mutters that Downey has never been on the receiving end of Madam’s pointed question and advice giving routine. 

‘She’ll be arriving soon, do you think?’ Downey asks, slouching into the chair. He rests his brandy on his stomach. The pose reminds Vetinari of their years at the Guild. 

‘I give her a week at most. Judging by her recent letter which arrived today.’ Vetinari fishes in a pocket and retrieves the correspondence. ‘She addresses the weather for two paragraphs, an update on her cat who has improved, he had a poorly ear. Let’s see, family nonsense--’

‘Gossip, you mean.’ 

‘Indeed. Ah, here, she says that she should be arriving “within a fortnight, depending” which is her code for less than five days. And before you ask, yes she knows what a fortnight is.’ 

Downey puts a hand up, he wasn’t going to ask. He wasn’t going to be snarky. He can behave about family. Vetinari folds the letter and tucks it away again. They finish their brandy in quiet. Downey nudges Vetinari’s foot. 

‘We both lost the bet,’ he says.

‘So we did.’ 

Vetinari stands and holds out a hand to Downey who shuffles himself upright then takes it. They slide through those familiar walls then hands slide through familiar clothes, against familiar skin. The next morning will come with a sigh. With diluted colours of autumn skies. With the familiar sounds of city-scape coming alive. And Vetinari will go and pull out papers on bye-laws regarding refuse disposal before taking up the morning paper and Downey will go and update unofficial Guild ledgers then teach students about poisoning and drowning and all the ways to bestow a soft death. 

The day will pass, with its golden sun, and the city, filled with all those little lives, will continue forward in its lurching, inevitable way. Building on the bones of the dead, building on the lives of the dead, and never making much of an effort to remember their names.

 

 


End file.
